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Open an .enl file without EndNote (Beta)

See every reference in your EndNote library in your browser, and export it to Zotero, RIS, BibTeX or Excel.

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
    Add more files

    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.

    An .enl file is an EndNote library, made to be opened in EndNote. If you no longer have EndNote, or just want to see what is in a library a colleague sent you, upload it here: the references are listed in your browser and exported to formats that open anywhere.

    First check the file size

    Since EndNote X9 the .enl file is only 4 bytes long. It just marks the library; the references sit in the Name.Data folder beside it. If your .enl shows as 1 KB or less, uploading it alone gets you an explanation instead of a result. Upload one of these instead:

    • a .zip of the folder that contains both Name.enl and Name.Data,
    • the file Name.Data/sdb/sdb.eni, or
    • a compressed library (.enlx), see opening .enlx files.

    Libraries made with EndNote X8 or older keep the references inside the .enl itself, so that file works on its own.

    What you see after uploading

    The result reports how many references were found and which EndNote generation made the library. It lists the first 20 references with year, authors, title, type and journal or book, a count per reference type, the groups with their sizes, and a short RIS sample. That is usually enough to tell whether this is the library you were looking for.

    Reading every reference

    For the full list, open the CSV download in Excel, Numbers, LibreOffice or Google Sheets. Each reference is one row, with every EndNote field as a column plus its groups, attachment paths and the dates it was added and last changed. The column names are EndNote's generic ones, so the journal of an article is under Secondary Title. The file is UTF-8 with a byte-order mark, so Excel shows accented names correctly.

    To keep working with the references, the same result offers EndNote XML for Zotero, RIS and BibTeX.

    Not every .enl is EndNote

    Other programs use the .enl extension too, and some people save EndNote's tagged text export (lines starting with %A, %T) under that name. The file is checked by its content, and you are told which case you have: a tagged text file can be imported into Zotero directly.

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

    More with EndNote Library Rescue