How do I Merge 12,000 duplicates?

kaw6r
Hi Folks,

In importing my references from Endnote, I somehow managed to duplicate most everything. I now have over 6,000 references, most of which are duplicated, so my library has over 12,000 entries. I can't possibly press the merge button 6,000 times, so is there another workaround? Can I bulk merge? Or is there a way to simply delete the duplicates?

Thanks!
  • mronkko
    There is no mass merge at this point. I would simply start the import over.
  • adamsmith
    what mronkko says.
    If starting over is not an option (though it would indeed be the best option) - I think there's a fair chance you just imported things twice sequentially, so you could sort by date added in the middle panel and delete the first 6000 items (though of course you should check that's the case).
  • aurimas
    edited August 23, 2013
    Since the two imports would have different "Added" timestamps, you can either

    (1) go to My Library, sort by the Date Added column, and then delete either the older or the newer set. You will probably want to delete the older, since I assume you may have already done some merging.

    or

    (2) create an advanced search (the magnifying glass in the toolbar) with the condition that "Date Added" "is before" <some time that would distinguish first import from second>. Save the search. Then click on the saved search under your collections, and delete all of those items.

    If you haven't synced yet or done much with your library, you can of course just delete your library (zotero.sqlite and storage folders from your Zotero data directory http://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data#the_zotero_data_directory after closing Zotero) and start over.
  • kaw6r
    Thanks all, for your quick response! It turned out that sorting by date was the easiest way to handle the problem. Now it's fixed.
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