Tab-Delimited Style

EndNote EndNote How To
1

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone has used the tab-delimited style in EndNote10.  I have tested out the style and when exporting the file into Excel the columns are really off and are not organized well, making it hard to use the data for sorting and charting. 

Has anyone modifed the Tab-delimited style so that each piece of information appears in it’s own column when exported into Excel?  If so, would you be willing to share?

Thanks,

Cindy Koman

Serials Librarian

Albany Medical College

Albany, NY

komanc@mail.amc.edu

2

I experienced the same problem when trying to use this style to make an Excell file.

I do not remember the cause of this problem, but I was adviced to first export the library by using the style “EndNote export” to a .txt file and then import this file again back into a new EndNote library by using the filter “EndNote Import”.

If you now try to export references from the new library by using the Tab Limited style the result should be better. At least I was able to convert the resulting file into Excell without any problems.

It is a long time since I did this, so I hope the above is understandable.

 Best wishes

Jan Ove Rein, M.Sc. (zoology)           
Senior Research Librarian (medicine)
Medical Library
Norwegian University of Science & Technology (NTNU)
Parkbygget
St. Olavs Hospital HF
N-7006 Trondheim   
Norway           
Phone + 47 73 86 82 73
Fax + 47 73 86 81 66
E-mail jan.rein@ub.ntnu.no
http://www.ub.ntnu.no/scorpion-files/  (The Scorpion Files)
http://home.online.no/~janor/start.htm  (Tropical Insects & Arachnids - in
Norwegian)

3

Hello:

The “messy data” problem is usually caused by carriage returns in your library. The tab-delimited format interprets every place the “Enter” key was hit in your library as a break, and then it makes a new line.

EndNote X does have a way to strip these carriage returns out, however, this change is PERMANENT and may change your library formatting. We therefore suggest that you perform these steps only on a backup copy of your library.

  1. Create a backup copy of your library by clicking File>Save a Copy

  2. Close your current library and open the backup instead.

  3. Click Edit>Change Text.

  4. Make sure Any Field is selected in the pulldown.

  5. Place your cursor in the Search For field and click the Insert Special button. Select Carriage Return.

  6. Leave the Change Text To field blank. 

  7. Click Change.

Once that is done, try exporting the tab-delimited file from that copy of the library. It should import more cleanly.

The other method mentioned on this thread of exporting in RIS and then importing into a new library will often work as well, but many people find the solution I outlined above a little simpler. In either case, please be certain not to overwrite your original library.

I hope this helps!