I’m using an import filter that consistently imports authors’ names the wrong way round. The import file has them as “<first name>,<last name>” and, when imported, they show up as “<First name>, <Last name>”. E.g. “Albert,Einstein” in the data file imports as “Albert, Einstein” in Endnote.
I’ve tried editing the import filter for Author Parsing so that the name order shows “First always precedes last”, but this makes no difference (and I’ve specified the last and first name separator to be a comma). The import happens the same way whichever selection I make for Name Order. Does anyone have any idea what I’m doing wrong?
I am not sure it will work, as the endnote filter option seems to only have an option for separator of Last, first, but not First, last? Since Endnote doesn’t separate the first name and surname as separate fields, I am not sure what is happening. You might try turning off all smart parsing?
What are the export options from WizFolio? (assuming that is where you are getting your file from?) Does it have a RIS export?
looked at WizFolio, and it implies you can export as RIS, but if your file is the result, it is making a mistake in the output, because it should be surname, firstname then in the A1 tagged output.
Can you provide an example of the text of the file you are importing?
As far as I can tell, WizFolio doesn’t have any export options. It advertises itself as exporting in RIS format, but the spacing in the tags is wrong, so the filter you see is modified to cope with the different tag spacing.
The version of EndNote I’m using (X4) has an import filter which certainly claims to be able to parse the author name order differently. I’ve attached a screen capture of that tab of the filter editor. If I click on the “Name order” button I get three options: “First Always Precedes Last”, “Last Always Precedes First”, and “Name Order is Inconsistent”. I’ve tried all of these, and it makes no difference.
I’m pretty sure that the filter is distinguishing between first and last names, because if I set the Author Name Separator between last and first names to a character that isn’t in the file, for example “#”, EndNote clearly treats the first and last names as a single name. For example, if I’m importing “Albert,Einstein” it imports as “Albert,Einstein,” showing that it thinks that “Albert,Einstein” is the author’s last name.
Yes, it doesn’t look like they are exporting correctly. Perhaps Tech support can develop a fix? – What happens if you reimport their file, back into WizFilio? Does it get it right?
Thanks – I’ll try out the tech support people. I haven’t tried reimporting to WizFolio; to be honest, I only use it because it’s forced on me as the only way of exporting references from some databases. It’s a pretty lousy system.
Since the exported text file has the author name(s) listed in first- then last-name order with a comma between the names, just have EndNote omit the comma.
Go to the EndNote toolbar, select EDIT, IMPORT FILTERS, EDIT WizFolio RIS. In the filter’s left column click to select “Field Editing”. Then select the Author field, and enter a comma in the “Enter text to be omitted” field. Click the ADD button then close the filter to save the changes.
As shown in the attached image, omitting the comma enables the text file to properly display the first and last names in the EndNote library.
Yes, that’s the instruction page I’ve been folllowing, thanks. It does look to me as if there’s some kind of problem with the EndNote filter editor. I’ll see what the Tech Support people have to say. Thanks for your help.
The technical support people tell me that the source of the problem is WizFolio’s nonstandard use of a comma after the first name. Apparently a comma says to EndNote: that which precedes the comma is always the author’s last name. This overrides the parsing option of, for example, “First Always Precedes Last”. They’re going to see if anything can be done to the software, but they’re pessimistic (I’m not sure why: this seems to be something that needs fixing). They’re also going to suggest to WizFolio that they adopt a standard RIS format.
Thanks very much, CrazyGecko, for pointing me to the Field Editing tab; that did it nicely. As you can see from the advice I got from the technical support people, your solution is the only way of handling the problem.
