export to excel with First Author only

I would like to be able to have a list of specific subjects relative to my journals that I am collecting.  For example, if I have a selection of articles about cars I would like to have a way of distinguishing which articles talked about red cars and which articles talked about blue cars.

I have not discovered wave doing this directly in an note so I then explored the option of importing my and note library into XL with the plan that I would then make a call him for red cars and a confirmation cars and I could then checked box which articles talked about which cars.

I reviewed several videos on you tube that described to do this.  I was relatively successful with the following exception: Many of my articles have more than one author.   I was planning on naming the columns as follows-author, tidal, Journal, red car, blue car.

I would like to first column. to only contain the last name of the first author as a space saving measure.   I have been unable to do this so far and request your assistance.

I look forward to hearing from someone with assistance for this problem.

Before exporting your references, change the output style’s “Author Lists” and “Author Name” settings in the bibliography section. Change “Author Lists” so only the 1st author will be displayed  (refer to image #1); and change “Author Name” so just the last name and no initials will appear (refer to image #2).

Save the changes to the output style file and use this modified file to export the references.


Yeah, tried that.   Didn’t work.   Still gave ALL the authors but in a really messed up fashion; the second author was just there in initials - semi colons all over the place, etc.

I may retry without the author later but right now I just don’t have the time to do this.

Have you tried?   

I did this by watching several videos and found on you tube.  I followed the instructions exactly repeated several times and still ended up with the same result.  In addition, the whole find and replace technique put all low semicolons in my references and made a references look like a mass.  You had addressed this in a previous post.

I appreciate all your help with you have offered me.  I look forward to any other solutions that anyone may come up with.

The key question I have is: Am I doing something wrong?

Yes, I tested the procedure prior to posting and it worked for me (using Endnote X7.4). When you modify the output style changes are saved to a new file with the word “Copy” added to the file name - you need to change the MS Word setting to use this new file in order for the 1st author to take effect before you export the library references. Can you attach your modified output style file?

You say you “followed the instructions exactly”  but don’t identify  the videos  or what those instructions were.  So it’s hard to say what you’re doing wrong without knowing the videos, the instructions/what you did,  and  the  generated end result  (output).

It sounds like your authors may be entered incorrectly in your records.  They must be one to a line.  Otherwise endnote interprets the authors all on the same line as one name, despite any punctuation to the contrary.  

updating the reference – (if I think I am right, that you have two simultaneous threads on the same subject???) might fix this if it can find the correct match- as it will replace your authors with the author list, one to a line.