I would add my request to this. I started to research a large book about three years ago and have thousands of entries in Citation 9. My attempts to import them into Zotero -- by whatever means -- have all failed. I have several doctoral students with the same problem. Is there any hope of a solution?

Citation exports a bad RIS file: No ER- tags and there's just too much junk created from notes, tags, etc.

Refer output creates a file that stalls the Zotero import and generates an error messge. After I clear the error message I'm left with a slew of bad entries that I must delete before restoring my Zotero database.

No luck with anything produced by Citation exports. The closest I've come to getting anything useful from Citation to Zotero is downloading an Endnote eval version, importing the Citation file and exporting it to RIS for import into Zotero. It's a messy import with lots of work needed with the individual records so until/if Zotero develops a Citation import filter, I guess I'm stuck.

Add me too. I have been using Citation for a decade and have v. 9x. I have thousands of items in my Citation data files. However, Citations dependence on ASCII is a major obstacle to my use (Middle Eastern Languages). I cannot enter a Czech author, a Hebrew title, etc. I have talked with tech support for Citation and they have no plans for moving to Unicode. So now I have just downloaded Zotero which sounds good. Now I see problems in converting my data base. BTW, could I use Zotero offline or must it always have internet connection?

I'm not following the instructions by noksagt. Are you suggesting that we convert the Citation 9 file to a citavi file?

I'm generally confused by Citation 9. How do you export anything from Citation 9? I can see how to convert files into Citation, but not out of.

I saved the Citation file as a refer-en.cf file. Then when I try to import, Zotero tries to download the file (dialog box for open with vs save, then download manager pops up). Then the progress bar hums along forever, never finishing.

Any help?

dialog box for open with vs save, then download manager pops up

If this happens, it will never import. Confirm your references are in the refer format. If they are not, paste the first few lines of the file here.

If they are, you can try to convert the character encoding of the file or copy the contents to the clipboard & use Zotero 2's import from clipboard feature.

Ok, I got the file to convert--messy as it is. (It was saved as a .cit file before, so I just changed the extension to .txt. Is there a better extension that might help?)

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix the messiness? For example
1) all of my notes are separated from their original works

2) all of my tags are gone

Thanks for all the help so far. I'm getting there!

I'm sorry it's been a while.

I tried what was suggested:
1. I exported my .cit file to a file in refer-en.cf format. (I couldn't figure out how to import into Zotero via clipboard.)
2. I opened the file in Notepad and saved as a .txt.
3. I imported the .txt file into Zotero.

More or less, things worked. However I am trying to work out the major kinks.
1. My notes are now disassociated from the citation of the work. The notes are in Zotero. They're just totally separate entries.
2. My "series name" field comes up blank in Zotero.
3. My tags are often in a list for a given entry, separated by semicolons. In Zotero, each series of tags is considered a single tag. So rather than "x; y; z" being three tags (x & y & z), it's considered a single tag, "x; y; z".

Any suggestions? What questions am I not addressing?

Thanks!

So now I can see that my problem is with the Citation exporter. No matter what format I use (refer-en, refer, endnote, ris), I end up with big problems with info in the wrong categories and such.

I looked at the custom format converter, and I don't understand the system, so I can't fix it. I'm not expecting much from Citation support.

Any suggestions?

I've just changed the .cit extension to .txt, and the file is just a very simple text file. Surely, there are some intrepid programmers who who can write a small program to read this this into Zotero?

Thanks for your reply.

Actually, the cit file format is pure text. The .cit extension is just a disguise. (I have included a sample from my library below, so you can get the idea).

I think there are a lot of people stuck with Citation 9 because they have thousands of refs and can't get out. After reading the comments above, they pretty much give up. (I did, months ago, but now I'm getting desperate, that's why I commented here). There are instructions on the Citation page about how to export RIS but it either doesn't work or (intentionally?) mangles the records into something that can't easily be read.

Here is my sample:

----

>Article in a Journal
>AU Masters, K
>YR 2005
>AT Flawed Evidence: a case study of misquoting and inaccurate referencing
>PG 221-226
>JR South African Journal of Libraries and Information Science
>VO 71
>IS 3
>AB The need to quote and reference accurately is crucial to academic writing and debate. While small errors are excusable, obvious interpretations, alterations, additions and deletions are not, unless indicated. In addition, primary texts are preferred; if secondary texts are used, this should also be clearly indicated. This article details a case in which these rules have been ignored. It begins by identifying the scope of the particular case: the mis-quoting of Michaels Gibbons. It then traces the route of the inaccurate quotation as it moves from its source through various influential documents and journal articles, until it is firmly established, and easily cross-referenced, but as a vague resemblance of the original, not recognised by the original author. Although this article deals with this one case, it is obvious that the circumstances are not unique, and that there is little reason to suppose that these events cannot be replicated elsewhere. This case illustrates the need for writers to always, where possible, refer to the original documents when citing them.

>KW evidence, plagiarism, quotation, Michael Gibbons
>AP Masters 2005
|
>Article in a Journal
>AU Berners-Lee, T; Hendler, J; Lassila, O
>YR 2001
>AT The semantic Web
>PG 29-37
>JR Scientific American
>VO 28
>IS 4
>AP Berners-Lee 2001
|
>Book
>AU Horrigan, JB; Rainie, L
>YR 2002
>BT Counting on the Internet
>PR Pew Internet and American Life project
>AP Horrigan 2002
|
>Article in a Journal
>AU Coiera, E
>YR 1995
>AT Medical Informatics
>PG 1381-1387
>JR British Medical Journal
>VO 310
>AP Coiera 1995
|
>Internet: WWW Book, report, paper, ms.
>AU ITU
>YR 2003
>AT ITU Digital Access Index
>DE http://www.itu.int/newsroom/press_releases/2003/30.html
>PL Geneva
>JR ITU
>SR Press Release
>LC 21/04/2006
>AP ITU 2003
|
>Technical Report
>AU ITU
>YR 2003
>BT World Telecommunication Development Report (7th Edition)
>PL Geneva
>PR ITU
>AP ITU 2003 b
|
>Technical Report
>AU ITU
>YR 2007
>BT World Information Society Report: Beyond WSIS
>PL Geneva
>PR ITU
>AP ITU 2007
|

----

etc.

According to the manual you can export your library into different formats:

If you find this is preferable, however, you can export your Citation datafiles in a number of
different formats.
Endnote Refer
ProCite
RIS (Reference Manager)

Given your example above, I wouldn't expect that you loose much data (if any) by exporting into RIS or some other format.

If I may nose-in and expand upon the suggestion immediately above. If you are not well-experienced with performing multiple search and replace actions on a file it is not too difficult if you are careful and keep working above a net (keep multiple copies of your file as you make progress). For those who are quite experienced with using a text editor, please excuse my intrusion.

You will need to use a reasonably good text editor. I didn't immediately find your operating system but you really need something more than NotePad or TextEdit for this to not be too frustrating.

Be sure to only work on a copy and save the original.

Look closely at RIS standards:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIS_(file_format)

http://refman.com/sites/rm/files/m/direct_export_ris.pdf

Plan ahead. You may find that the order of your actions can make it easier or more difficult.

Except for eliminating the angle bracket, you shouldn't try to search/replace more than one tag at a time. This may require several iterations to get it right. (I recommend saving each step and then working on a new version of the file.) Each time you complete a search/replace cycle I recommend that you compare the product of your effort to the RIS standard.

Be sure to pay attention to punctuation and spaces.

Be aware that the exported files may not be consistently presented even within item type. If you find yourself wondering why your search/replace works for some records and not for others you may need to do some hand editing.