filemaker pro into zotero

kim1
I am trying to convert my filemaker pro (9) database into zotero. It doesn't seem to be working though: I only seem to be able to export to .tab .clv. slk .dbf .dif .wk1 .bas. mer .htm .fm7 .xml .xls
Is there any way in which I can still convert my existing database into a format that zotero can import?

Thanks very much,
Kim
  • ahoward
    edited June 16, 2009
    If you were really clever you could probably come up with some way for it to prepend the appropriate formatting to each field, then export to something like html, then save it as text and import using RIS or something. It would be a lot of work and a lot of trial and error, but I could imagine it working.

    You might also try getting your data into Scribe somehow, which worked through FileMaker, as I understand it. That might be able to convert back and forth. Can't say that with any certainty, though.
  • mcgreig
    You could try doing a mail merge - it worked for me! I had been trying to import 1200+ references from a custom Filemaker database and followed the advice of exporting to csv and trying to convert the file using a trial version of Endnote. I followed the instructions in the Endnote manual, but no matter what I did it didn't work. After looking more on these forums I discovered that Endnote is a nightmare in itself, so decided to try and cut it out of the process.

    I went to next section fof the Endnote manual that describes how to do a tagged file. First I tried RIS format, but still had problems, so moved on to Refer/BibIX, and it worked great! I even managed to preserve my file attachments using the %U url field (the %> tag didn't work for some reason).

    I don't how familiar you are with mail merging, and I haven't tried it directly from Filemaker. It'll also depend on how your data is set up. Here's the basic steps. If you need more detail let me know:

    - Export to Excel
    - Follow instructions in Word as to how to set up Excel as a data source for your mail merge. It's quite straight forward if you think along the lines that the 'recipient' is one of your references.
    - In Word, you want to write a mail merge 'letter' which contains the Refer tags followed by the merge field from your data. To avoid there being empty fields or lines, you need to do conditional formulas. If you don't know what these are, or how to do them in Word, have a look at this link, which also tells you how to get a conditional cr/lf:

    http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/Word/microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields/2008-08/msg00329.html

    This might also be useful depending on how your data is set up:
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/214827/EN-US/

    Once you have typed it all out, do the merge but choose to edit the file. You then get a document with a reference per page. I had to search and replace some double paragraph marks with single ones, and also I converted my file attachment links from relative to absolute paths. Then I saved as a plain text file, with Unicode UTF-8 encoding. You can open this up and check it in a text editor, or simply import into Zotero.
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