Question on REF ID Numbering when Copying Between Databases

Hi - I would like to merge 2 of our RefMan databases.  The RefMan ID #'s for the main database is numeric (1 - 23,003).  The RefMan ID #'s for the database we are copying has a letter in front of the number (SF1 - SF4200).  I copied the smaller database into the larger one, hoping that the 4200 records would add onto the last RefID (thereby starting at Ref ID # 23,004), but instead, it just copied the ID numbers exactly as is.

Now my merged database looks messy, b/c I cannot sort by RefID and have a clean list.  Does anyone know how to copy over records but not have the RefID’s also copy over? 

Thanks!

Hello PV,

When copying between databases, Reference Manager is always going to try to preserve the existing Record Number, unless it’s already taken in the destination database.

The only way that I’m aware of to take references from one database, and bring them into another, sequentially renumbering the records new to that database is going to be to Export the information from Reference Manager in the RIS format, creating an RIS formatted text file.

Following this, Import the references into your destination database using the RIS (not the Risid) filter.

This should bring in all of the information from those exported references, and give them new IDs.

(The RISID filter will import the record numbers as well.)

I hope this helps.

Thanks,

Steve