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Convert an EndNote library to RIS (Beta)

Export your .enl or .enlx library to RIS for Mendeley, Citavi, Paperpile or RefWorks, without EndNote.

Opens: ENL, ENLX, sdb.eni
Saves: EndNote XML, RIS, BibTeX, CSV

Convert

EndNote library
Choose files… or drop them here
.enlx, .zip, .enl, .eni · up to 200 MB each, 10 files max
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    Upload the compressed library (.enlx), a .zip of the folder containing “Name.enl” and “Name.Data”, or the file Name.Data/sdb/sdb.eni. Libraries from EndNote X8 and older: the .enl file alone is enough.

    Options

    Adds “EndNote group: …” keywords so you can rebuild your groups in Zotero or Mendeley.

    Your files are deleted after processing.

    RIS is the plain-text exchange format almost every reference manager can import: Mendeley, Citavi, Paperpile, RefWorks, Zotero and EndNote itself. Use this page to get an EndNote library into one of them when you can't, or would rather not, run EndNote's own export.

    How to convert an EndNote library to RIS

    1. Upload the library. Current EndNote versions need the .enlx file, a .zip of the folder holding Name.enl plus Name.Data, or Name.Data/sdb/sdb.eni. For EndNote X8 and older, the .enl file alone is enough.
    2. Keep Keep EndNote groups as keywords ticked if you want to recreate your groups later.
    3. Download the RIS file (Name.ris). It contains every reference outside EndNote's Trash.
    4. Import it with your reference manager's RIS or file import function, then spot-check a few records, especially author names and journal titles.

    Several libraries can go into one upload (up to 10 files); each gets its own RIS file.

    What goes into the RIS file

    • One record per reference, starting with a type tag: JOUR for journal articles, BOOK, CHAP for book sections, THES, CONF, RPRT, ELEC for web pages, and so on.
    • Every author on its own AU line; secondary and tertiary authors (editors of a book, for instance) as A2 and A3.
    • Title, journal or book title, year, volume, issue, pages, publisher, place, ISBN/ISSN, DOI and URLs, abstract, notes, research notes, label, accession and call numbers, language, and the custom fields as C1–C7.
    • Each keyword on a separate KW line. Groups appear as extra keywords like EndNote group: Reviews, which most programs turn into tags or keywords.
    • Web pages keep their access date in Y2.

    Programs differ in which of these tags they read, so a rarely used field (a custom field, for example) may not show up after import even though it is in the file.

    PDFs and formatting

    The RIS on its own has no attachments. The Everything with attachments ZIP contains a second RIS whose L1 lines point to the PDFs in its PDF folder with EndNote's internal-pdf:// form. Zotero resolves those links; other programs may ignore them, and then you can add the PDFs from that folder yourself.

    Italics and superscripts inside fields become plain text. For Zotero, the EndNote XML route keeps a little more than RIS does.

    More about what this tool reads and writes: EndNote Library Rescue.

    More with EndNote Library Rescue