Endnote authors on same line

kerri3278
I am trying to import a large endnote library into zotero. However, most of the authors in endnote are showing up on one line instead of separate lines. Thus, only the first author is showing up when I import them into zotero.

Is there a way to get around this without manually editing over 1500 references?

Thanks!
  • bwiernik
    How are you exporting from Endnote?
  • kerri3278
    I tried xml and ris.
  • noksagt
    Are they listed on separate lines in endnote? Please provide a minimal example of something that fails to import as expected in zotero. But it sounds like your endnote data is less than ideal or (much less likely) that you need to edit/replace the exporter in endnote.

    Depending on how these are formatted, you may be able to run find/replace in the exported file before you import to zotero.
  • kerri3278
    Yes the data is not ideal. They are not listed as separate lines in endnote.

    Example of how its listed in endnote:

    TY - JOUR
    AU - Wrisley, D.M., Marchetti, G.F., Kuharsky, D.K., and Whitney, S.L.
    IS - 10
    PY - 2004
    SP - 906-918
    ST - Reliability, Internal Consistency, and Validity of Data Obtained With the Functional Gait Assessment
    T2 - Physical Therapy
    TI - Reliability, Internal Consistency, and Validity of Data Obtained With the Functional Gait Assessment
    VL - 84
    ID - 1761
    ER -


    So then only one author is imported in Zotero:

    Wrisley, D.M. (2004). Reliability, Internal Consistency, and Validity of Data Obtained With the Functional Gait Assessment. Physical Therapy 84, 906–918.

    Can you elaborate on how I could get find/replace to possibly work? Thanks!!
  • noksagt
    Perhaps you can discuss this with Endnote Support to see if they have good/easy-to-use tools to fix the data that is stored within Endnote? At the least, they should understand any limitations of their program that may have led to your issue in the first place.

    It is challenging, but technically possible to fix this in the RIS file. You need more than mere find/replace: you need to be able to use regular expressions and/or be able to script the program that does the replacement. This is because you have to work only with the AU line and because you have commas for both author separation and given/sur- name separation. These tools are generally intended for somewhat advanced users.

    I'm far from a regular expression expert. People sometimes chime in here with something that's "above and beyond" the expectations of supporting Zotero and files that conform to the standard, so you may get better advice. But this vim command kinda gets you what you want (it replaces the author-separating commas with line breaks, but only on the AU field). It is very brittle, because it expects exactly two initials.:g/^AU - /s/\(\w*, [A-Z]\.[A-Z]\.\), \(and\|\)/\1\n/g
  • adamsmith
    :g/^AU - /s/\(\w*, [^,]+\), \(and\|\)/\1\n/g

    would be an alternative that takes a more expansive view of first names but may also get more things wrong (untested). If you're not comfortable using vim but can install a regex capable text editor like Notepad++ or Atom, we can tell you what to try there.
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