I’m trying out the trial version of EndNote X8 on OSX High Sierra in order to see if I can import my old Papers 3 library and see how that works. Papers 3 is largely unsupported these days and I need to find something that is getting updated regularly. I’m hoping that EndNote is that solution.
So far, I’ve installed the trial version of the EndNote X8 software, which seems to be set up OK. To export my library, I choose a subset of my entire library, using EndNote 8 or higher as the version, using Full Title as the Source Format. This seems to work successfully and I get a full XML file that seems to work just fine.
However, when I go to import this XML file into Endnote, I choose Import, select the file, and then nothing happens. I don’t get an error message, no references are imported, just nothing. Is this a limitation of the trial version? Is there an example of what normal import behaviour is supposed to look like? I have tried importing BibTex files and RIS files generated from Papers 3, and nothing seems to be different.
The problem was that the Options field was not showing that I needed to select the type of file I was trying to import. The interface isn’t very good with this - you would think that by selecting a file type, EndNote would be smart enough to decide what it was and behave accordingly, or at least, throw up an error message telling you what to adjust if the import wasn’t successful. Nope, that’s not what happens, you need to see the Options button at the very bottom left of the dialog box, click on that, and THEN the options for importing come up.
Why is this not turned on by default? I wasted at least two hours trying to figure this out on my own, and the whole thing could have been avoided by a bit of better design. Hopefully the developers read this (optimistic of me, I’m sure) and can make an adjustment. Notwithstanding that, the program looks pretty powerful, and now that I know I can get my Papers 3 library into it, I’m looking forward to seeing what it can do.
I was able to import all of the linked PDFs into Papers 3 without any trouble. Once I was able to tell EndNote what the heck to do, it was all pretty straightforward from there. Hope it worked out for you!