The University of Queensland

We are often approached by researchers who have a bibliography that they created in a Word document, which they would now like to convert into an EndNote library.

As a general rule, there is no easy way of transferring a bibliography in a Word document into EndNote.

Exception: if you are working in the biomedical area, and your bibliography consists largely of journal articles that would be included in the Pubmed database, you should be able to use the HubMed citation finder to automate much of the transfer to EndNote. See the instructions for using Hubmed below.

Otherwise, you probably have three options:

• Manually enter all your data into EndNote, using copy-and-paste.
• Locate the references in a database or library catalogue, and download them to EndNote using direct export or a filter. If the database or catalogue can be searched using an EndNote connection file, this will speed up the process.
• Do some basic editing of the Word document so that the references can be imported into EndNote for further manual editing. Full instructions for this procedure are given below.

Using the HubMed Citation Finder

This is a procedure for converting bibliographies that consist largely of journal articles that are included in the Pubmed database.

Go to the HubMed Citation Finder.

Copy the bibliography from your Word document, and paste it into the box.

Read the Hints below the box to make sure that your bibliography is in a format that the citation finder can interpret.

Click on the Submit button.

You will see how HubMed splits up your bibliography into individual references. If this has been done correctly, click on the Yes button. If it is not correct, click on No, and go back to the previous screen and read the Hints again.

After you click on Yes, HubMed will check the references against the Pubmed database and try to locate them.

You will see a list of the matched and unmatched citations. Editing the data in the unmatched citations may help HubMed to locate them. There are some records which it has difficulty in interpreting correctly. Click on the Done button to complete the process.

You should now see a series of abstracts extracted from PubMed. Check the All box at the bottom of the screen to select them.

Click on the Export Citations button. When prompted for a format, select RIS.

When prompted, Open the file and the references should import automatically into EndNote.

Editing the Document to Import the References for Further Editing

This is a procedure that will import your bibliography into EndNote. However, when you open a reference, all the data will be in the Title field. You then have to highlight each section of the reference, and drag-and-drop it into the appropriate field.

Proceed as follows:

Copy the bibliography and paste it into a new Word document.

Save the new document as a text file (.txt)

Use the Word function that displays all the hidden formatting symbols (the backwards P)

You will probably see that there are one or two paragraph marks between each reference, depending on the spacing of the bibliography.

Use Word's Find-and-Replace function to replace those symbols (i.e. the two paragraph marks, or whatever) with the same symbols, followed by %T and a space (e.g. ^p^p%T )

Each reference now begins with %T followed by a space (except the first reference, which you must edit manually)

You need to have a blank line between each reference. If this is not the case (and that will depend on your original bibliography), use the Find-and-Replace function again to replace the paragraph mark with two paragraph marks.

Save these changes. Close the file.

Go to EndNote. Click on Edit>Import Filters>Open Filter Manager. Select the EndNote Import filter and click on Edit. Go to the Record Layout section. Change the setting to Blank line separates records.

Then go to the Reference Type section. Under Default Reference Type, choose the most common reference type in your bibliography.

Close the edit window and save the edited filter under a new name.

Now click on File>Import to see the Import dialog box. Choose your file of references. For the Import Option, select your edited filter. Click on the Import button.

Each reference should import as a separate reference in your EndNote library. Note that all data is in the Title field.

You must now manually edit each reference. First check the Reference Type, and amend as necessary. Then highlight each section of data, and drag-and-drop it into the appropriate field in the reference window. Follow the normal EndNote conventions for data entry, e.g. each author must be on a separate line.