Errors exporting to CVS file

xenpelar
We would like to analyze our bibliography (+/-700 ref.) in an excel document, to be able to work with columns.

We use the CVS export file, but a lot of information is missed: some titles have dissapeared; the second (and rest) authors are missing; information is divided in different columns;...

Forum disscussions have been checked, (https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/356/ and https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/23259/export-to-excel-spreadsheet/) but there weren't useful for our problem.

Thanks a lot,
Nere
  • adamsmith
    If there a problems with the CSV, we'd need more details on it.

    I get all authors on export (they are all in the same column, semicolon separated) and the CSV contains every Zotero field, so there shouldn't be anything missing. I don't understand the "divided in different columns" part at all.

    Examples and/or more detailed description might tell us more. I know several people who have run data analysis on Zotero data using the CSV, so it's certainly not a general problem.
  • DWL-SDCA
    Perhaps Excel has auto-collapsed the contents of some of the columns where the cells contain large amounts of data. When you click within a cell, does the missing information appear above?
  • xenpelar
    I'll try to describe what we do, just to find out if there is something we do not correctly. An example of the exportation you can find here: http://tinyurl.com/z8fzb2t

    1. Export library. Format: CSV. Translation options: export notes; UNICODE (UTF-8). No other options visible: CSV file is created.

    2. Information in the csv file, first column, first line (all other columns are empty in this first line):
    Key,"Item Type","Publication Year","Author","Title","Publication Title","ISBN","ISSN","DOI","Url", (etc)

    3. Data in 2nd line (and next lines):
    all the information is in the first column, separed with " and comma; but the data of TAGS field is divided in next columns. Some other content also is divided in columns (marked in yellow in the example)

    4. When there are more than one author, only first author is recovered in "Author" field, rest are lost.

    5. Excel option to convert all data in one column in severeal columns is not working well with "," sign as division sign.

    6. When there are more than one author, they are divided in several columns. (marked in green in the example)

    I hope this explanation is clear enough.
    Thanks a lot for your attention.
  • adamsmith
    yeah, that looks like a problem in how you're importing into Excel :
    It looks like Excel defaults to splitting fields by semicolon, not by comma. You should be able to select the separator and set it to comma (csv stands for "comma separated values" after all). If your 5.) means that doesn't work properly you'd have to say how.
    It may work better if you import rather than open the file in Excel.

    Opening the CSVs in LibreOffice works without problem. Maybe someone else can run you through the recommended steps in Excel, otherwise I'll try to remember to check next time I boot up Windows.
  • xenpelar
    LibreOffice works perfect!! All the fields are correct in columns and no information is lost.

    Sorry I haven´t thought about trying with other programs than Excel.

    Really grateful for your quick answer and help. Great job!
    Thanks a lot,
    Nere
  • jctp
    Good Morning,
    I have a problem with exporting zotero with csv format. I have tried various solutions (open in Excell, LibraryOffice and OpenOffice) and consulted the forum. The response has been better I was this thread but I need a little matter I do not know if you can solve:
    In my zotero there are several authors for each document (2 or more). I would like each author is in different columns, but all authors together always appear in the same column.
    My purpose is to analyze authors, author indexes to see how many authors appear, etc. I do not know if there was any other way to do this, I do not know if exporting it to another program or manager ....
    Thank you so much. Regards
  • adamsmith
    That's almost impossible to do with standard export, since we wouldn't know how many columns to use for authors (which is why Zotero exports them into a single column), but you could just copy the author column into Word or LO, and split it up using text--> table functionality there.
  • jctp
    Thank You very much. thanks for the reply. incredible fast response. I'll stop going crazy trying to do with csv and I try word as you advise me
  • zuphilip
    BTW Excel (and also LibreOffice Calc) can split text into different cells itself, see https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Split-text-into-different-cells-30b14928-5550-41f5-97ca-7a3e9c363ed7 .
  • jctp
    Thank you very much!!!! Perfect with that option
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