University of Cambridge Computing Service EndNote: Converting an existing MS Word Bibliography Rosemary Rodd 1. Importing references into EndNote When EndNote imports references from an external file it uses a set of instructions, known as a filter, to identify the various parts of each reference and put them into their correct fields. When references are downloaded from a source which is specifically designed to be useable by other programs, their parts are usually marked by labels, known as tags, in order to facilitate this. For example, a typical reference downloaded from the PubMed database looks like this: PMID- 11586348 OWN - NLM STAT- MEDLINE DA - 20011004 DCOM- 20011101 LR - 20041117 IS - 0028-0836 (Print) IS - 0028-0836 (Linking) VI - 413 IP - 6855 DP - 2001 Oct 4 TI - Palaeolithic paintings. Evolution of prehistoric cave art. PG - 479 AB - Sophisticated examples of European palaeolithic parietal art can be seen in the caves of Altamira, Lascaux and Niaux near the Pyrenees, which date to the Magdalenian period (12,000-17,000 years ago), but paintings of comparable skill and complexity were created much earlier, some possibly more than 30,000 years ago. We have derived new radiocarbon dates for the drawings that decorate the Chauvet cave in Vallon-Pont-d'Arc, Ardeche, France, which confirm that even 30,000 years ago Aurignacian artists, already known as accomplished carvers, could create masterpieces comparable to the best Magdalenian art. Prehistorians, who have traditionally interpreted the evolution of prehistoric art as a steady progression from simple to more complex representations, may have to reconsider existing theories of the origins of art. AD - Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, UMR CEA-CNRS 1572, 91198 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France. helene.valladas@lsce.cnrs-gif.fr AU - Valladas H AU - Clottes J AU - Geneste JM AU - Garcia MA AU - Arnold M AU - Cachier H AU - Tisnerat-Laborde N LA - eng PT - Historical Article PT - Journal Article PL - England TA - Nature JT - Nature JID - 0410462 SB - IM MH - Archaeology MH - Evolution MH - France MH - History, Ancient MH - Humans MH - Paintings/*history EDAT- 2001/10/05 10:00 MHDA- 2001/11/03 10:01 CRDT- 2001/10/05 10:00 AID - 10.1038/35097160 [doi] AID - 35097160 [pii] PST - ppublish SO - Nature. 2001 Oct 4;413(6855):479. The filter instructs EndNote that anything preceded by the tag JT - is a Journal Title , AU - identifies an Author and so on. As you can see this is quite straightforward and tagged references are easy to import correctly. 2. Formatted text references In contrast, a typical reference that you have typed in an ordinary text document would look something like Valladas, H. et al., 2001. Palaeolithic paintings. Evolution of prehistoric cave art. Nature, 413(6855), 479. _This is very easy for a human being to read and understand, but it is difficult to write instructions to guide a computer program (for example there is no way to retrieve the names of the secondary authors and it would be confusing if the title contained anything in italics.) If you are dealing with a bibliography which you created directly by typing it is also very likely that you will have created some errors and inconsistencies, and these will add to the difficulty of reading in your bibliography by mechanical means. 3. Configuring EndNote on the PWF (Personal Workstations Facility) This step can be skipped if you are working on a personal machine. When you edit output import filters on your own machine you will have access rights to edit the default Filters folder and these set-up steps will not be needed. On the PWF this folder is shared by all users and it would create chaos if they could all make changes to the filters. * Right-click within "My Documents" and select "New folder". Give it the name "Filters" * Start up EndNote and open your library. * Edit>Preferences>Folder Locations * Click the Set Folder button beside the Filters folder * Click My Documents (at the left) to go to the space where you have editing rights * Single click the folder labelled Filters and then Select and OK to set it as your current Filters folder. From this point onward the behaviour of a personal machine should be the same as that of workstations on the PWF. 4. Building up a template to read in formatted text * Start up EndNote and create a fresh blank filter by Edit>Import Filters>New Filter... * Use the File>Save As command to save it with a new name. * Click the heading Templates in the menu on the left to start creating new templates. * You need to create a template for each possible type of reference in the bibliography that you want to import. Start with the default, which is Journal Article. * At the moment, your wordprocessor file doesn't have any tags, but you will use search and replace to add some, and instruct EndNote to use the existing punctuation to identify the other parts of the references. * Type AU- in the Tag column * Press Tab to move to the next column. * Use the Insert Field menu to insert Author then Insert Field again to add Year (with a space between it and Author). * Type a full stop and space immediately after it, then insert the Title field, followed by full stop. * After the full stop and space, insert Journal, followed by comma, Volume(Issue) then comma, space Pages, full stop. * The final result should look like: AU- Author Year. Title. Journal, Volume(Issue), Pages. * Click the Record Layout heading on the left, and set "Blank line separates records" as the option for identifying where a record begins and ends. * Save your new filter and close it. 5. Saving your Word bibliography in a format that EndNote can import * Now open your sample Word bibliography. * Each reference is a separate paragraph, and there is a blank line between references so you can quite easily add your AU- tags using the Search and Replace command. Choose Edit > Replace. * In the Find What box enter ^p^p ( paragraph marker repeated twice) * In the Replace With box enter ^p^pAU- (to keep the paragraphs, but tag them with AU-) * Click Replace All * Note that this hasn't tagged the first entry because it doesn't have a preceding paragraph marker, so type in AU- by hand. * Save the file as plain unicode text (use Word's Save as command, and when it prompts for an encoding choose "Other encoding" and scroll up to select UTF-8) 6. Now see whether your filter will import your Word file * Open your EndNote library if it is not already open. * Choose File > Import * Set the filter you made earlier as your current import filter. * Choose the text file you saved from Word. * Inspect the references which appear in your library. You should find that most of them are reasonably correct, but notice that punctuation within titles will have caused some errors because EndNote has no way to tell where the Article title ends and Journal Title starts. 7. Polishing your filtering * If your bibliography contains references other than Journal Articles, you will need to set up filter templates for all the possibilities. * The simplest method is probably to create a filter for each type of reference, with a different default type each time. Import the file from Word and discard the references which have been imported incorrectly each time until you have a complete set. 8. Proof Read! You will inevitably create quite a lot of errors in your new EndNote library. It is essential that you check the result carefully. If you are very close to finishing your work and submitting it to a publisher or examination committee it does not make good sense to attempt to convert to EndNote at that stage. However it may be useful to do the conversion once you have completely finished and handed in your work, if you now want to produce a working reference library to use for further study. If many or all of the references are available online (e.g. in JSTOR or PubMed) you will get a much better result by using your Word bibliography as a printed guide to enable you to search online and download the references into EndNote than you will by attempting to convert it. 9. Backing up your modified filters Where are they? This depends on which version of EndNote you are using. On a Windows machine, versions X2 and later create their Styles, Filters and Connections folders in "My Documents" On a Macintosh, or if you are using an earlier version of EndNote, these folders are stored inside the EndNote program folder. Each filter is a small individual file and can potentially be lost or over-written, so if you have done significant work modifying one, you should make backup copies (e.g. by copy/paste to a memory stick). If you upgrade to a new version of EndNote you will need to copy your modified styles into the fresh version of the Filter folder. It is important that you remember to do this before installing the upgrade as EndNote over-writes the existing Filter folder when it installs. 10. Further help If you want more individual help, email: ll-support@ucs.cam.ac.uk 29/10/09 4