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How do I import my EndNote library, complete with attached PDFs?
Obviously, manually adding every PDF from a large EndNote library would be rather labor intensive. There is a trick to automating it, though.
Zotero's RIS import does have the ability to import PDFs and Endnote does export links to your PDFs in the RIS files it generates. The problem is that Endnote does not give the full path to the file.
You should be able to import all the PDFs by using a single find and replace statement. In EndNote, you need to export your library using the RIS (Refman) style. It should be exported as a text document.
In it, you will want to replace the 'internal-pdf:' links with 'file:' links.
On Mac OS X and Linux, you may run:
sed -e 's/internal-pdf:\/\/.*\//file:\/\/[escaped-path-to-pdfs]\//g' [input.ris] > [output.ris]
(see remark below)
On Windows, you may copy the following and paste it into notepad. Save as “ris-fix.vbs” or similar & run it:
' RIS link fixer for windows ' transforms Endnote internal-pdf:// links into file:// links Dim FileName, objDialog, boolResult Dim regEx, FileContents, modFileContents Dim objShell, pdfFolder 'choose RIS file Set objDialog = CreateObject("UserAccounts.CommonDialog") objDialog.Filter = "RIS (*.ris)|*.ris|All Files (*.*)|*.*" objDialog.FilterIndex = 1 boolResult = objDialog.ShowOpen If boolResult = 0 Then WScript.Quit Else FileName = objDialog.FileName End If 'regexreplacement Set regEx = New RegExp regEx.Pattern = "internal-pdf://.*/" FileContents = GetFile(FileName) 'choose folder containing PDFs set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application") set pdfFolder = objShell.BrowseForFolder(0, "Specify a folder where you have copied all your PDFs...", 0) If (not pdfFolder is nothing) then ReplaceWith = "file://" + pdfFolder.self.Path If (Right(ReplaceWith, 1)<>"\") then ReplaceWith = ReplaceWith & "\" End If regEx.Global = True modFileContents = regEx.replace(FileContents, ReplaceWith) If modFileContents <> FileContents Then WriteFile FileName, modFileContents Wscript.Echo "The RIS file has successfully been modified." Else Wscript.Echo "No EndNote attachments have been detected in the RIS file." End If End If function GetFile(FileName) If FileName<>"" Then Dim FS, FileStream Set FS = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") on error resume Next Set FileStream = FS.OpenTextFile(FileName) GetFile = FileStream.ReadAll End If End Function function WriteFile(FileName, Contents) Dim OutStream, FS on error resume Next Set FS = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") Set OutStream = FS.OpenTextFile(FileName, 2, True) OutStream.Write Contents End Function
Remark on sed statement
Thanks for the tip. If the previous sed statement doen't work for you, try
sed -e 's/internal-pdf:\/\//file:\/\/[escaped-path-to-pdfs]\//g' [input.ris] > [output.ris]
instead.
Explanation: The previous sed statement did not work for me, as it removes the subdirectory contained in the RIS file exported by Endnote, resulting in [base-pdf-dir]/[filename.pdf]. However, to find the PDF [base-pdf-dir]/[subdir_named_by_endnote]/[filename.pdf] is neccessary.
Example: Your Endnote library called Literatur (i. e. Literatur.enl and Literatur.Data), and the exported RIS file Literatur.txt are located at H:\EndnoteTest. Run
sed -e 's/internal-pdf:\/\//file:\/\/H:\/EndnoteTest\/Literatur.Data\/PDF\//g' Literatur.txt > Literatur_2zotero.ris
The resulting file Literatur_2zotero.ris can be imported in zotero (in my case it threw some error messages about pdf-to-text, didn't worry about it worked anyway).