customizing imports from Endnote

Hi- I'm attempting to switch to Zotero from Endnote, which I've been using for many years. My biggest problem seems to be importing "Manuscript" files, and a customized reference type I created called "Letters." I notice that Zotero has both these reference types, but the transfer doesn't seem to be supported through RIS-- the manuscripts are coming through as websites, for example, and many fields are lost. I've seen the RIS format specifications, but where can I find info about how Zotero is actually translating that RIS code into Zotero fields? And is it at all possible for me to customize how Zotero imports things? This is getting very frustrating and while Zotero looks much better than Endnote in some ways, I doubt I'll be able to make this move if I can't customize the import. I just have too many strange quirks in my databases. Plus it's a point in Endnote's favor that I can customize both export and import styles there... Please help!
  • this is a difficult issue and has been discussed in many posts before. please search for endnote import on the forums.
    for a start see here:
    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/7441/import-from-endnote-ris-translator-editor-edited-book-extra-titles-as-notes/

    for how csl maps fields see here:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/csl_syntax_summary
  • You can get a sense for what Zotero's field mappings look like for RIS here. (This doc is not regularly updated, but I don't think there are any major differences with RIS since this was created)
    http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/field_mappings

    The biggest problem here is that RIS just does not support much of the information you are interested in.

    Now, if you want to poke around with how Zotero imports your RIS file you would want to take a look at RIS.js (You can find this file in your translators folder of your copy of the Zotero extension.) You can browse RIS.js online if you like here https://www.zotero.org/trac/browser/extension/trunk/translators/RIS.js
  • I had already looked through the forums on importing from Endnote and found no solution to my problem. The pages on Zotero's field mappings and the RIS.js are very helpful (the code is all new to me but I can make sense of some of it). I can move info around in my Endnote fields and customize Endnote exports to match whatever import specifications Zotero uses. However I still cannot see any info on what RIS fields Zotero imports into the manuscript fields such as "Archive" and "Location in Archive." Am I missing something, or is this not set up? It seems like it should be possible to customize these import specifications so that some RIS field would map into those fields. I hardly even care which ones, since I can change my endnote output style to match. I just have no idea how to do this for Zotero.

    Thanks! I'm sure other historians have had this problem before, but it could be that not many others have used Endnote as extensively as I have for archival sources.
  • This is a common problem, and it would be ideal if some of these fields were added to the RIS spec. Zotero adheres to that spec. We don't want to bake a bunck of hacks into the software.

    However, with a text editor and a few minutes of messing around you can make a few quick edits to your RIS.js file to facilitate importing your records. Note, when there is an update to this file at some point in the future it will overwrite any changes you make, but this is most likely a one time thing, in which case the following should work just fine. So, if you take the following steps you should be able to get those fields over.

    1. Find and open your local copy of RIS.js
    The quickest and most reliable way to find it is through the “Show Data Directory” button in the Advanced tab of your Zotero Preferences window. Then just look for the Translators folder, inside the translators folder you will find RIS.js. You can open this up with a text editor.

    2. Add two lines to the field mapping section of RIS.JS
    Add these two lines directly after line 35
    AL:"archiveLocation",
    AX:"archive",


    3. Set Endnote to use these field mappings
    Just set Endnote to use the prefixs AL and AX for location in archive and archive. When you have this set up your resulting RIS files exported from Endnote should look like this.
    AL - Box 15
    AX - History of Science Museum

    I just tried this and it worked fine. It is not a particularly elegant fix, but it will work as a quick hack to help move things over.
  • Thanks, this is extremely helpful and it looks like it will work. The only remaining problem is that Zotero is still importing manuscript files as webpages, even though the RIS.js file is mapping manuscript:"PAMP". Doesn't that mean that if I tell Endnote to export manuscript files as type PAMP, then Zotero should import it as manuscript? Yet it still wants to import as webpage, and then my newly created AL and AX fields are lost. Is there a quick fix for this?
  • What you just described should work. If you open up one of the problematic RIS files you should be able to check the first line of each entry. You want it to say TY - PAMP if you are getting webpages it probably looks like TY - ELECYou can either make a change to your RIS export in Endnote, or if there are no webpages in your file you could just do a find and replace to get PAMP at the top of all your files.
  • Just to let you know that after all this tinkering I imported my libraries successfully-- thanks so very much for your help!
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