Making the switch from Reference Manager to EndNote
- Detailed Reference Manager to EndNote conversion instructions (PDF)
- Converting your Reference Manager library to an EndNote library (YouTube)
- How do some Reference Manager commands work in EndNote? Reference Manager to EndNote “Cheat Sheet" (PDF)
Good news for Reference Manager users: changing those entries to EndNote citations is a piece of cake, and it won’t involve any text editing, change in format or loss of data. Best of all, you don’t even have to open Reference Manager.
And now that EndNote has library sharing functionality, it’s time to make the switch from Reference Manager to EndNote. We can walk you through the process – it’s amazingly quick and simple.
Start by opening your Reference Manager database in EndNote. You’ll do this the same way you open your other EndNote libraries; just select “Reference Manager Database” from the drop-down list of file types.
Keep in mind that the way you choose to save your database depends on whether or not you’ve made any customizations to your Reference Manager database. If you haven’t made any customizations, simply click “convert,” name your EndNote library, save – and you’re done. However, if you’ve customized your Reference Manager database, you’ll need to choose how to translate those customizations to EndNote. This is done in the field mapping window, that simple window with two sets of customization settings.
The settings at the top of the window control the reference types, such as “book” or “article,” so select which type you want the previously stored Reference Manager references to convert to. You’ll see that the second set of options allows you to select individual fields, such as parts of a citation or bibliography entry, and choose how they will be imported into EndNote.
Once you’ve chosen your settings, click “OK.” (You also can undo your customizations at any time by clicking “reset to default map.”) When you’re finished making changes, click “ok” and “convert,” then name your library and save.
Attachments Made Easy
Even if you choose not to import all your Reference Manager attachments into your EndNote library, you can still access them. Keep in mind, though, that EndNote can only provide links to access that information as long as you’re on the same computer – otherwise, the links may be broken.
If you want to stay on the safe side and import your attachments to ensure full access to them, it can be done in a few simple steps. When EndNote asks if you want to “convert your file attachment links to relative,” click “yes” and it will import them – and then tell you how many attachments were successfully imported.
If you’ve added citations or a bibliography using Reference Manager’s Cite While You Write in Microsoft Word, those can be changed these over to EndNote in just five steps:
Open the library you converted from Reference Manager.
Go to the EndNote tab in the Word ribbon (the line with the “home,” “insert” and “view” options) and click the “convert citations” dropdown menu.
Select “Convert Reference Manager citations to EndNote.”
Go to EndNote and select your style and layout options.
Click OK – and now you’re done!
See below a step by step instruction of the above mentioned steps:
- From the File menu, select Open > Open Library to display a Select a Reference Library dialog.
- At the bottom of the dialog, select Reference Manager Databases (*.RMD) from the "Files of type" menu.
- Use the file dialog to navigate to the folder that contains the Reference Manager database that you want to convert to EndNote.
Highlight the database name, and then click the Open button.
A "Convert Reference Manager Database" dialog will appear that lets you know that the database must be converted for use.
- You can either:
- Click Convert to proceed with the conversion.
This option allows EndNote to automatically convert Reference Manager reference types and fields to EndNote.
It also leaves all file attachments stored in Reference Manager references in their original location.
- Click Customize if you want to modify the mapping of individual Reference Manager reference types to EndNote reference types and Reference Manager fields to EndNote fields.
This option is useful if you have created customized reference types in Reference Manager.
- Use the top panel of the dialog to map each reference type to a corresponding EndNote reference type.
When you highlight a setting in the top panel of the dialog, you can change the field mapping for that reference type in the bottom panel of the dialog.
Click OK to save changes to the mapping.
- Click the Reset to Default Map button if you want to discard your changes and return to the default mapping set.
- Click OK to save your changes when you are finished using the Field Mapping tool.
- Click the Convert button if you do not have any additional changes to make.
- On the "Save Converted Library as" dialog, give the new EndNote library name (the default file name is the same as the old Reference Manager file name).