The group/subgroup of JabRef is not transfered when the bib file is imported

liuwenqiang

Hello everyone,
I want to transfer from JabRef to Zotero. When the bib file is imported, most of the things are pleasurable and Zotero does everything for me. However, I found one problem there is that the group/subgroup I created in JabRef is lost in Zotero. I searched in this forum and found one post (https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/176247#Comment_176247) said Zotero supports group/subgroup to be imported and the other post (https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/69350#Comment_69350) said the information is lost. So I am confused. Does Zotero support group of JabRef to be transferred?
Thanks in advance!

noksagt

The second of those two comments was made 3 years before the first comment. It was true when I said it, but JabRef group import was added before the first comment that you linked to.

That commit was five years ago and there have been no significant changes to group support since then.

There is no "standard" for BibTeX groups & JabRef's groups are only really supported by JabRef. It is possible that Zotero's importer was brittle and/or that JabRef's export format has changed since then. I haven't tested.

adamsmith

I'd check if better bibtex does a better job -- I seem to recall Emiliano putting some effort into JabRef import:
https://github.com/retorquere/zotero-better-bibtex

noksagt

And, yes: JabRef changed group mechanism. BBT was updated in January and will presumably work. Here's their ticket on JabRef's change (in case someone wants to address stock translator).

liuwenqiang

Thanks very much for all your replies! I have read the ticket in GitHub, but I am sorry I do not quite follow all the ideas there. Does that mean I should install BBT add-ons and then the groups would be imported correctly? In the tickets they mentioned about version 5.0.73, however, I have checked that Zotero on my Ubuntu 14.04 is version 5.0.44 and there is no updates if checked with the fucntion `Check for updates`. Could you please give me some more instructions?
Any help would be much appreciated!

adamsmith

Yes, you should install BBT and I'd expect this to work and the 5.0.73 version refers to the add-on. 5.0.44 is indeed the latest version of Zotero.

liuwenqiang

OK, I will install BBT and try to import the bib file later.
Thanks a bunch!

emilianoeheyns

BBT should be able to import the newer groups format (which is an abomination, BTW). BBT is now at 5.0.126 (but it's still early in the evening...)

liuwenqiang

I installed BBT and it works. It is so great that the groups are back.
Thanks very much for all the help!