Importing References with Attachments from Bookends to Zotero

JayseAnspach · November 20, 2020

I wish to transfer all of my references with their attached PDFs from Bookends to Zotero. Is there a quick and easy way to do that? So far, my efforts have resulted in a separation between the references and the attachments, which got placed onto my desktop . . .

inh3 · November 21, 2020

I have done this multiple times without issues. Here is how I do it:

1. In Bookends, Export References (Hits) as Endnote XML (make sure to click the button to include attachments). Save it to Desktop or similar. This will generate an XML and copies of all the PDFs.

2. In Zotero, Import the generated XML file and under File Handling on the next screen select "Copy files..." Ignore the PDFs.

This results in the PDF copied to the Zotero folder and linked to the right reference in Zotero. You can then safely delete the XML and the extraneous PDFs from the finder. I usually do this in batches of about a couple of hundred references at the time.