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Transferring references from Zotero to EndNote

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  1. Open Zotero
  2. Click the File menu and select Export Library.
  3. Select RIS format from the drop-down menu.
  4. Click OK.
  5. Save the file to your computer in a location you can find.
  6. Close Zotero.
  7. Open your EndNote™ library (or create a new one ).
  8. Click the File menu and select Import File.
  9. Click Choose.
  10. Browse to and Select the file you saved from Zotero to Open.9. 
  11. From the "Import Options" dropdown, select Reference Manager (RIS).
  12. Click Import.
The steps above will only transfer the references from Zotero to EndNote and not the PDF attachments. To transfer the references along with PDFs to EndNote, please follow the steps below:
  1. Open Zotero. 
  2. Click on the File menu and select Export Library. 
  3. Under Format select EndNote XML (Check Export Notes and Export Files) 
  4. Click OK. 
  5. Save the file to your computer in the preferred location. The exported file would be saved in a folder named 'Exported Items' 
  6. Close Zotero. 
  7. Open EndNote. In this instance, we recommend that you create a new library (Click on File>New and give a name to your library and click on Save). 
  8. Click on the File menu and select Import File. 
  9. For Import File, select the file you have exported from Zotero and click Open. 
  10. For Import options, choose EndNote Generated XML from the drop-down list. 
  11. Click on Import. 
  12. Click on File menu>Exit. 
Now open the Exported Items folder (created when you export from Zotero). You will see a PDF folder within the Exported Items folder. Open the PDF folder. Here, you can see subfolders created with numbers randomly. Copy all the subfolders. 

Now go the location where your EndNote library is saved. Here you will see the .enl file and .Data folder. For example, if your EndNote library name is My EndNote Library, then you will see My EndNote Library.enl file and associate My EndNote Library.Data folder. 

Open the .Data folder (My EndNote Library.Data) and create a PDF folder within the .Data folder. Once you create the PDF folder, open the PDF folder, and paste the subfolders you copied from the Exported Items folder. 

Now open the EndNote library. It will index the PDFs. Once it is done. You should be able to see the PDFs attached to the library. 

Document Conversion:
In order to convert a document created using Zotero tools, it needs to be formatted in a custom style. You will find a copy of the custom style in the Attachments section at the bottom of this article. Download the "Zotero-to-Endnote-Title.csl" file. Now add the custom style to the Zotero program.

Adding the custom style to the Zotero program: 
  1. Open Zotero and click Edit > Preferences. 
  2. Click Cite tab and click the + button to add the custom style. 
In Word follow the steps below: 
  1. Open Word, click the Zotero tab, and select Document Preferences. 
  2. Select Zotero-to-Endnote-Title and click OK. Now references will display only the title in the open and close curly braces:{Title}. 
  3. Open the EndNote library and the document formatted using the "custom" style.
  4. Save the modified document with a new name.
  5. Windows: Press [Ctrl]+A on the keyboard to highlight everything.
  6. macOS: Press [Command]+A on the keyboard to highlight everything.
  7. Windows: Press [Ctrl]+6 (above the "T" and "Y" key) to remove any field codes.
  8. macOS: Press [Command]+6 (above the "T" and "Y" key) to remove any field codes.
  9. Remove any Bibliography present in the document.
  10. Update the document with the appropriate style using the EndNote tools. 
Please note that you may get the "EndNote Select Matching Reference" dialog box when formatting the bibliography, please read EndNote: Select Matching Reference for information on how to resolve this.

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