Excel to Zotero

GPHC_NR_Admin
I am attempting to import from Excel to Zotero. Previously I was saving as utf-8, and then importing into Zotero. I'm using this at work so it's going through file renaming, and getting file URLs so working with excel is a lot faster using concatenate. It worked like a charm before. However, I'm having trouble importing.

I attempted to save as csv and convert to json and import using this website <http://www.convertcsv.com/csv-to-json.htm>. However it says it's not a supported file format. I'm wondering how can I get my library in Excel to Zotero. The only thing I need the library to have is author, year, and URL.
  • noksagt
    Zotero can't read arbitrary JSON.

    Many people that go from Excel to Zotero have used BibTeX a an intermediate format.

    E.g.
    https://www.academia.edu/1747759/From_spreadsheet_Excel_to_.bib_file_-_a_simple_solution
  • LiborA
    I used for this same purpose RIS format and PSPad editor (www.pspad.com). It is a simple manual operation.
    1. In the first step, I add correct RIS code before each column and add html tags for new paragraph for each item.
    For example for article from journal looks one line like this:
    <p>TY - JOUR</p><p>TI - Hodnota a cena informací</p><p>AU - Plecháčová, J.</p><p>SP - 77</p><p>IS - 2 </p><p>DA - 1991</p><p>PY - 1991</p><p>VL - 33</p><p>T2 - Vodohospodářské technicko-ekonomické informace</p><p>J2 - VTEI</p><p>SN - 0322-8916</p><p>ER -</p>
    2. In the second step I create a new html file (CTRL+N) in PSPad and copy (CTRL+C and CTRL+V) whole sheet in the body section of this new file
    3. Menu HTML item "Reformat HTML code" (in PSPad ofcourse)
    4. Menu HTML -> Conversion -> Remove HTML tags
    5. Delete empty space on the start of each line (CTRL+H is magic tool)
    6. Save document as - select all files (*.*) - something.ris
    7. Import ris file into Zotero.

    I used these steps for cca 1900 articles of our institutional journal.
  • GPHC_NR_Admin
    I am inclined to think that this version of Zotero has a bug in it. I have tried both ways. The first way I used Sharelatex to obtain a bibtex file. However, when attempting to import and telling it to find the file that is BibTex (which it "sees") it says it's not a supported file type.

    I also used the PSPad saving as a ris file which Zotero "sees" as a ris file but it says again that it's not a supported file type. I completely uninstalled and reinstalled the program but I still get the same error.
  • LiborA
    Can you share your bibtex and ris files?
  • noksagt
    It could also be that the file you'vemade isn't quite right. Have you tried importing a known good bibtex/ris record?

    Inspect the file you've made in a text editor. Share a record or two from the file if you think they should import.
  • GPHC_NR_Admin
    I just tried to import good files of each type. Both work. So there's no bug. I don't mind that I only have the author's last name, date, and URL. These things are all I need for now as I try to get everything into Zotero.

    Hopefully this link works. I made it public. This is the Bibtex stuff: https://www.sharelatex.com/project/5756ad7465f1458d24f01348

    Going back to look at the Bibtex I see that it's composed of three files, and that the one I thought the info would be pulled from isn't. I've never used bibtex before so I don't know the coding for getting everything to show up in the file that it's actually supposed to be in.

    For the RIS files this is how the final layout turned out (showing only two examples):
    TY-JOUR
    AU-HCPD
    DA1994
    URL\\\hcpd-plan-01\planning\stewardship\research\allparks\scannedresearch\547HCPD1994.pdf
    TY-JOUR
    AU-Guynn
    DA2011
    URL\\\hcpd-plan-01\planning\stewardship\research\allparks\scannedresearch\548Guynn2011.pdf

    Thanks all for your help and patience!
  • GPHC_NR_Admin
    Ok so I kept playing around with the PSPad because it bothered me that something was wrong (total user error). I noticed from the example I found that worked that when I removed all the spaces I did it as a single space which subsequently removed all spaces. So I redid everything and then put in three spaces instead. Once I did that and saved the file as ris I attempted to import it into Zotero. It worked finally!

    I had also noticed that my URL should have been UR, and that I was also missing some dashes as well. *sigh* I'm really glad this worked out and I found out about some other cool stuff in the process. =D Thanks y'all!
  • LiborA
    @GPHC_NR: your example is not correct syntax of ris file. See definition on http://refman.com/sites/rm/files/m/direct_export_ris.pdf .
    Correct version looks like this:
    TY - JOUR
    AU - HCPD
    DA - 1994///
    L1 - \\\hcpd-plan-01\planning\stewardship\research\allparks\scannedresearch\547HCPD1994.pdf
    ER -
    TY - JOUR
    AU - Guynn
    DA - 2011///
    L1 - \\\hcpd-plan-01\planning\stewardship\research\allparks\scannedresearch\548Guynn2011.pdf
    ER -
  • GPHC_NR_Admin
    Thanks for your feedback! I didn't want to use L1 because I'm not interested in attaching files since I'm only using this for work. Instead I'd rather link to the files via the network drives. So when I or someone else clicks on the URL while connected to our network it brings up the file.

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