Using Endnote with L^ATEX/BibTEX

Rob MacLeod (macleod@cvrti.utah.edu)

• 1 EndNote to BibTEX
• 2 BibTEX to EndNote
• 3 Using EndNote files directly with BibTEX
• About this document ...

EndNote is a nice program on PCs and Macs for managing a database of literature references. There are ways to move records in and out of EndNote so that we sane people who use L^ATEX and BibTEX can benefit from the user friendly entry of EndNote references. Here I describe what I have learned so far about this topic.

A good place to look for more information is the EndNote web cite at www.endnote.com/.

1 EndNote to BibTEX

To extract EndNote references into a BibTEX format, you can simply create or use an existing output format from within EndNote and the result should be something BibTEX can handle. There is a section in the Support and Services section about downloading style files and here you can find a style file for BibTEX format. Insert this file into wherever you keep styles on your Mac/PC and then you can use this style to create an output file that BibTEX should read.

2 BibTEX to EndNote

We often want to share references with our unfortunate colleagues who have to use a Mac/PC based WYSIWYG text processing program (aka MS Word). To do this, there is a BibTEX style file that creates output that EndNote can import. The steps are as follows:

1. Make sure you have a copy someplace where BibTEX can find it of the style file called refer.bst. You can download this from EndNote's ftp cite at ftp://ftp.endnote.com/pub/BibT<SMALL>E</SMALL>X/. If you are on CVRTI machines, we have it already. On the SCI machines, you can find the file at ~macleod/tex/bibtex/refer.bst.
2. Make up a L^ATEX file with citations for all the references you want to export. If you include the command nocite* in the document, it will actually extract every reference from your BibTEX file so this is an easy way to export an entire file.
3. In the L^ATEX file, include the usual {\bibliographystyle} command, but as an argument, provide ``refer'', so the command looks like this
   

                \bibliographystyle{refer}
   

4. Run L^ATEX on the file.
5. Run BibTEX on the file.
6. The result of these two steps will be a file with the extension .bbl that contains the desired bibliography records in a format that EndNote can export. It is the standard ASCII format for EndNote.
7. Copy the file to your Mac/PC (use ftp or something that converts the file from Unix to Mac or PC format).
8. Open EndNote and then select ``Import'' and the Import Option called ``Refer/BibIX'' and then EndNote should be able to import it into an existing or new endnote database file.

Now to actually replace \cite commands with the required tags in EndNote, you will have to do some manual work. It should be possible to write an awk/perl script that will make a good attempt at guessing at tags, but this will probably not work completely as the EndNote tags seem to include things that only EndNote can know, such as the reference # of the entry in the EndNote database. At present then, you will have to manually hunt for references and replace them with the ones from the EndNote database. If you have used a sensible naming scheme for the keys in your BibTEX database (e.g., the one I made up!), then this will not be so bad. EndNote uses the first author's last name and the publication year as parts of the key so if that matches in some way the naming scheme in BibTEX, then searching is at least facilitated. When in doubt about a match, note that there is a field called ``Label'' in the EndNote database that should contain the key field from the original BibTEX entry.

3 Using EndNote files directly with BibTEX

There are some programs out there that will allow you to read EndNote files directly and use them with BibTEX. I have not tested any of them and so cannot say anything useful about them other than supply the pointer to the EndNote ftp site (ftp://ftp.endnote.com/pub/BibT<SMALL>E</SMALL>X/). Have fun and let me know what you learn.

About this document ...

Using Endnote with L^ATEX/BibTEX

This document was generated using the LaTeX2HTML translator Version 99.2beta6 (1.42)

Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, Nikos Drakos, Computer Based Learning Unit, University of Leeds.
Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999, Ross Moore, Mathematics Department, Macquarie University, Sydney.

The command line arguments were:
latex2html -split 3 -no_white -link 3 -no_navigation -no_math -html_version 3.2,math -show_section_numbers endnote

The translation was initiated by Rob MacLeod on 2001-07-25