From Citavi to Zotero

MarcusO
Hello,
I was succesfully importing my big database from Citavi to Zotero (about 10.000 entries). Thank you very much for this great possibility!

Most of import worked fine, but there are some problems:
- tags from citavi "Wissenselemente" (notes in word of zotero) have not been trasferred into zotero notes (text of notes are imported),
- standalone notes of citavi are not imported to zotero.
- Journal articles have sometimes numbers (issue), these numbers are only transfered in the field "extra" (as: issue).
- number of pages are not transferred
- tables are only importet as text not as structure (lines and columns).
- "Wissenselement of pictures" and "Wissenselement of file" are trasferred but without the link to the picture/file.
- roman numbers are transferred into arab ones,
- attachments are all transferred, unfortunately not with their titel, but all with the same title "Full Text".
- Carriage return in citavi fields are note taken over.

Is there any hope that these difficulties could be adressed? Thank you very much.
M.
  • Wolfgang_D
    edited April 17, 2023
    It would be great to get an answer to these topics, especially transfer of links of "Wissenselemente" to pictures/files. In addition covers of books will not be imported. I tried this by copying the covers to the same directory together with the attachments a I miss to transfer custom fields from Citavi to Zotero.

    I´ve posted similar questions in Sept. last year, unfortunately without any response.

    I think due to new owner of Citavi, the new license model and the meanwhile unsatisfying support, more and more Citavi-user think about migrating to Zotero.

    That´s a big chance...
  • agam2222
    Hello all ,
    Hope you are all well
    I have done the same moving from citavi to zotero due to better changes in zotero (especially pdf editing abilities) and changes to worse in citavi with declining support and instability in ownership and changing models.
    I do not have answers for all your question but regarding the issue of book covers which seemed useful in citavi for visual recognition of items, you can use a better addon in zotero called zotero pdf preview:
    https://github.com/windingwind/zotero-pdf-preview#readme
    I know the import process from citaiv to zotero is not perfect but most of sources and notes are there (in a rough way) and I suggest keeping a local copy of citavi projects (and combining them in one big project) just in case of needing them to refine any needed source in zotero..
    best regards
  • zuphilip
    I tried to look into some of these reported issues on the Citavi translator:
    tags from citavi "Wissenselemente" (notes in word of zotero) have not been transferred into zotero notes (text of notes are imported),
    Yes, I can see that tags from notes are missing in Zotero. Maybe I can fix that...
    - standalone notes of citavi are not imported to zotero.
    Can you provide an small example file to import in Zotero with such a standalone note from Citavi?
    - Journal articles have sometimes numbers (issue), these numbers are only transfered in the field "extra" (as: issue).
    In general these information should be imported as well. For journal articles Zotero should also use the field dedicated field "issue". For other item types (where there is no issue field in Zotero) it will move the information to the extra field.
    - number of pages are not transferred
    The number of pages should be imported, but the method relies on some assumptions on the Citavi export format. It is possible that something changed there. If you have an example for that, I could have a closer look.
    - Carriage return in citavi fields are note taken over.
    To what field do you refer to here? It could be that Citavi is using some HTML inside a field which is ignored by Zotero.
  • MarcusO
    Hello zphilip,
    thank you very much for having a look at these issues.

    >Can you provide a small example file to import in Zotero with such a standalone note from Citavi?
    Yes, of course, where can I upload the file?

    >- Carriage return in citavi fields are note taken over.
    >To what field do you refer to here? It could be that Citavi is using some HTML inside >a field which is ignored by Zotero.
    I meant text in notes (in citavi "Wissenselemente")

    Thank you very much
    Marcus
  • zuphilip
    Every cloud storage where you can easily upload the file, share the link here in the forum and I can then with the link download it again is fine. For example you can use GitHubGist. If the example contains also a knowledge item with carriage returns, then I can also try to look into this.
  • MarcusO
    Thank you very much for taking a look at the import. Here is the link with a sample database: https://we.tl/t-g1YFEqaatU (it is on WeTransfer until 29 november).

    It contains the following problems described above:
    - "Wissenselemente" with tags (text of notes is imported, tags aren't).
    - standalone notes of citavi (which are not imported).
    - tables in "Wissenselemente" (which are only importet as text not as structured lines and columns).
    - "Wissenselement of pictures" and "Wissenselement of file" (which are trasferred but without the link to the picture/file).
    - attachments (which are transferred, but not with their titel, but all with the same title "Full Text".
    - Carriage return in citavi fields in e. g. Wissenselemente [notes] (wich are note taken over).
    - Journal articles with several numbers which are only transferred in field "extra", not in field "issue" and others (issue [Ausgabe] and number of years of the published journal [Jahrgang]).
    - books with number of pages (which are not transferred)
  • zuphilip
    This sounds like very good examples. Unfortunately the file is not a backup file ctv6bak but a ctv6 file, which cannot be imported directly to Zotero. Could you create the backup in Citavi and then upload this file for me? See also https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/import_from_citavi
  • MarcusO
    I apologise for that, I have now uploaded the correct format: https://we.tl/t-hYekDhRSl8 (again on WeTransfer until 2 December).
    Thank you very much!
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