Zotero: Moving from EndNote to Zotero

Have you been using EndNote for a while? Do you have a substantial collection of resources that you'd rather not have to re-collect once you move to Zotero? No worries, there is a fairly simple process for getting your saved citations out of EndNote and getting them into Zotero. This page will tell you how.

Background: Zotero works with RIS files, not the proprietary ENL files used by EndNote, so the first step of this process is to convert your EndNote files (.enl) to the type of .ris files that Zotero can read.

1.  Go to the EndNote Output Style Repository and download the latest version of the "Reference Manager (RIS) Export" style. (You can quickly find it among the EndNote styles by typing Reference Manager into the search box on the style repository landing page.

2.  After you have downloaded this style in EndNote, do the following:

• Double-click the style file. This should open it in EndNote.
• In EndNote, go to "File Menu" and choose "Save As". Replace the word "copy" with "Zotero RIS" and click "Save".
• Click on "File Menu" and select "Close Style."
• Close EndNote and restart it.

Please note that if you are currently running EndNote X1 or earlier (this means you haven't updated since 2008), there is a separate set of instructions that can be found in the EndNote online knowledge base.

3. If you want Zotero to bring in any file attachments saved in your EndNote library (perhaps PDFs of articles that you've saved), follow these steps to edit the RIS file that you just downloaded.

• In EndNote, go to Edit --> Output Styles. Select "Open Style Manager...", find "Zotero RIS" style in the list, and click Edit.
• You will see a style editor window.
  • On the left side, under "Bibliography", click on "Templates."
  • On the right side, click the "Reference types" button and select "Journal Article."
• Confirm that the following line appears in the template (you can copy-paste it from here to avoid mistakes). It should be somewhere between the line starting with TY and the end of the Journal Article section (right after KW and before L4 is the most appropriate spot):

• L1  - `File Attachments|`

• Go to File Menu and select "Save".
• Close the Style Editor window and go back to your library window.

4. Exporting EndNote Records

Note: If you wish to export only a portion of your EndNote library, select the items you wish to move. If you select nothing and use the following instructions, you will move everything.

• Go to File Menu --> Export. A dialog box will pop up asking you where you want to save the file.
• Navigate to your EndNote data directory (this is usually found as MyDocuments\endnote.Data). Make sure you select the data directory, not any subdirectory like PDF. Important: Zotero looks for file attachments in a directory related to the RIS file you are exporting. If this file is located in the wrong place during import into Zotero, file attachments will not be imported.
• Select "Text File (*.txt)" in the "Save as type" dropbox. Select "Zotero RIS" in the "Output style" dropbox. If you only wanted to select a subset of your library and have already highlighted those, check the "Export selected references" box. To export everything, leave that box unchecked.
• Click "Save."
• Close EndNote.

In Zotero:

• Go to the Gear menu and select "Import..." You will be asked to select the file to import. Navigate to the location where you exported your EndNote library (if you followed the directions above, this should be MyDocuments\endnote.Data) and select the RIS file. Note that the extension may be ".txt" rather than ".ris". Click Open
• The EndNote library will be moved to a separate collection. This means that you may, after import, remove the collection (right-click --> Remove Collection) without deleting the imported references, which will be moved to the root of your Zotero library.
• In cases where Zotero cannot make sense of an EndNote field (because the two programs use some different fields), it will collect all values that cannot be properly imported and store them in a note attached to the imported reference. You can choose either to assign some of these notes to manually added fields in Zotero or to remove them.  Tip: You can display all of these automatically generated notes using the "_RIS Import" tag. To select and delete these notes, select a note and then press Ctrl+A. Then, right-click and choose "Delete Selected Items from Library..."
• Take some time to look at your imported references now and do any clean up necessary.

For additional help with this process, you can search and post in the Zotero forums, which can be enormously helpful as you use this program. The Zotero community is active and willing to help.