Moving from Mendeley to Zotero

Hi - complete newbie here after some advice, please.
I'm fed up with Mendeley as it keeps having sync issues (and has corrupted some of my references) so I'm moving to Zotero. I've seen that I can export from Mendeley and import to Zotero (the direct link doesn't work as the file in M. isn't working properly).

But... is there any way to convert a Word document from having Mendeley references to having Zotero ones? I have a draft with 300+ references linked from Mendeley that I don't really want to re-insert if at all possible!

Thanks in advance.
  • If you have not recently updated Mandeley DO NOT update it before you try to export/import. (sorry for the shout)

    Someone else can give you more detailed advice and also advice if you have recently updated Mandeley. It is a holiday in the USA and some of the volunteers are probably involved with family things.
  • the direct link doesn't work as the file in M. isn't working properly
    What do you mean by that?
    is there any way to convert a Word document from having Mendeley references to having Zotero ones?
    Zotero can read the Mendeley citations in the document. Those citations won't be linked to any imported ones in Zotero, so you won't be able to make changes to the metadata in Zotero to fix errors, etc. (and if you want to do that for a citation you should delete it and reinsert from your Zotero library), but you should be able to continue working with the document in Zotero.
  • Thank you for your replies.

    Sadly my Mendeley is at 1.19.2. Reading the Zotero help pages, it looks like the link isn't working because of encryption, and as I don't have an unencrypted backup it looks like I won't get all the data back from M. I cannot sync up to the Mendeley servers (as sync isn't working) so my options are limited - as most of my references were added via the web interface, I will see if I can export from the Mendeley server (not using the local client).

    Is there a way for the Zotero client to verify data it imports (so use the DOI to verify the authors/title/abstract are held correctly)?

    Thanks for the advice on the Word document - I'll start on that once I get the basic database loaded up.
  • Try to download Mendeley 1.18 from the links above and then sync.
  • Thank you - I've managed to get it to work!

    Mendeley support advised 'reseting' Mendeley desktop first, logging back in, then syncing from their cloud. Once that was done, I followed the tips on the Zotero site and migrated to Zotero.

    Thanks for your advice and support.
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