Creating a Tab-Delimited Format

The Tab-delimited import option can import text files in which each reference is separated by a paragraph mark (¶), and the fields within a reference are separated by tabs. Most databases or spreadsheets can export a tab-delimited text file.

Preparing the Data Before Exporting

Author Names

Before you export data from a database or spreadsheet into a text file, we recommend that you separate multiple author names with a semicolon (;) or two forward slashes "//". For example:

McCartney, P.//Harrison, G.//Lennon, J.

If you cannot easily do this in your database, you can do it after exporting or manually edit the data after it is in EndNote.

Reference Types

If possible, you should make sure that each reference includes a field indicating the reference type. Use EndNote’s Reference Type names so that EndNote is able to recognize the formats. If you have only one type of reference (such as Journal Articles), it is not necessary to do this—the import settings can indicate that all references should be imported as journals by default.

If you cannot label each reference with the appropriate Reference Type name, you should export your data into separate files based on reference type. This makes it easy to preserve the original reference types of the references when importing the data files into EndNote.

Preparing the Data File for Import

Once the tab-delimited file(s) are generated, you must open each file in a text editor or word processor and add two lines to it. These lines tell EndNote what the default reference type is for the data and how the data should be interpreted.

First Line: The Default Reference Type

The first line of the file must define the default reference type for the entire file. The format for the first line is an asterisk immediately followed by a valid EndNote reference type, followed by a paragraph mark (¶). For example:

*Journal Article <¶>

A file of journal articles might look like this:

**Default Reference Type Table**
*Journal Article	< ¶>
Author	<tab>	Year	< tab>	Title	<tab>	Journal	<tab>	Volume	<¶>
Jones, J//Shoe, S	<tab>	1994	<tab>	Easy Food	<tab>	J. of Eating	<tab>	1	<¶>
Woo, W //Lee, L	<tab>	1995	<tab>	Rain Hats	<tab>	J. of Clothing	<tab>	2	<¶>
Carlos, C\\Luis, L	<tab>	1991	<tab>	Cell Phone	<tab>	J. of Phones	<tab>	3	<¶>

First Line: Customized Reference Type

If you have custom reference types, you may check them by following these instructions.

Select Preferences from the EndNoteEdit menu.
Selecting Reference Types.
Click the Modify Reference Types button.

A file of articles in which you are using customized reference types might look like this:

**Customized Reference Type Table**
*My Reference Type	< ¶>
Author	<tab>	Year	< tab>	Title	<tab>	Journal	<tab>	Volume	<¶>
Jones, J//Shoe, S	<tab>	1994	<tab>	Easy Food	<tab>	J. of Eating	<tab>	1	<¶>
Woo, W //Lee, L	<tab>	1995	<tab>	Rain Hats	<tab>	J. of Clothing	<tab>	2	<¶>
Carlos, C\\Luis, L	<tab>	1991	<tab>	Cell Phone	<tab>	J. of Phones	<tab>	3	<¶>

Note: Ensure that the generic fields for the reference type (Modify Reference Types dialog) appear in line 2.

First Line: Using Multiple Reference Types

If you could not make separate files based on reference type, you can specify each reference type within one file. In this case, your first line must be the list of field names found in the Generic reference type, starting with a field for "Reference Type." Then you can use the additional Reference Type column to define the actual EndNote reference type names. For example:

**Using Multiple Reference Types Table**
Reference Type	<tab>	Author	<tab>	Year	< tab>	Title	<tab>	Secondary Title	<tab>	Volume	<¶>
Journal Article	<tab>	Jones, J//Shoe, S	<tab>	1994	<tab>	Easy Food	<tab>	J. of Eating	<tab>	1	<¶>
Book Section	<tab>	Woo, W //Lee, L	<tab>	1995	<tab>	Rain Hats	<tab>	J. of Clothing	<tab>	2	<¶>
Report	<tab>	Carlos, C\\Luis, L	<tab>	1991	<tab>	Cell Phone	<tab>	J. of Phones	<tab>	3	<¶>

Second Line: EndNote Field Names

The second line of the tab-delimited file must contain the actual field names used by EndNote into which you want the data imported. The order of the field names does not matter as long as they correspond to the order of the data in the rows beneath them and correspond to the names of the default reference type.

For example, if your default reference type is "*Journal Article," then the field names in the second line of your file will be those of the Journal Article reference type:

**EndNote Field Names Table**
*Journal Article	< ¶>
Author	<tab>	Year	< tab>	Title	<tab>	Journal	<tab>	Volume	<¶>
Jones, J//Shoe, S	<tab>	1994	<tab>	Easy Food	<tab>	J. of Eating	<tab>	1	<¶>
Woo, W //Lee, L	<tab>	1995	<tab>	Rain Hats	<tab>	J. of Clothing	<tab>	2	<¶>
Carlos, C\\Luis, L	<tab>	1991	<tab>	Cell Phone	<tab>	J. of Phones	<tab>	3	<¶>

Note: The field names must be separated by tabs and a paragraph mark must follow the last field name.

Additional Considerations

ANSI, ASCII, or UTF-8 formatted text files can be imported. This means that no font styles or text styles can be preserved during import.
All field names and reference type names in the file must be identical to those in EndNote. See the List of Reference Types for a listing of all of the reference types and field names.
Multiple author names should be separated by semicolons (;) or by two forward slashes (//).
Fields cannot contain tabs or paragraph marks. Let the lines of data "wrap" to the next line.
Leading and trailing spaces are removed during importing.
No uppercase or lowercase conversion is made during importing.
A reserved field name called "Unused" may be used for data that you do not want imported into EndNote.

Errors While Importing Tab-delimited Files

When you are ready to import this file into EndNote, select Import from the File menu, and then select Tab-Delimited as your import option. See General Importing Instructions.

If EndNote cannot import a record or a field within a record, it will alert you to the error. There are three basic alerts:

Bad Default Reference Type — The default reference type that you specified in the first line of the file is not a valid EndNote reference type name. (The problem can be as simple as extra spaces after the reference type name in your text file.)
Bad Field Name — A field name that you entered in line 2 of the file is not a valid EndNote field name.
Missing Reference Type Information — There is no default reference type specified for the file and there is no reference type field defined for the references.

If you get one of these error messages during the import process:

Open the import file in a word processor.
Correct the problem.
Save the file as a text file
Repeat the import process.