transferring inline citations from MS word to LaTex

Question

I'm converting a MS Word document into a LaTeX document. I have >100 references and would like to know the easiest way to convert all the inline citations from my MS Word document to my LaTeX document.

I've already generated by BibTeX library and can convert each citation individually by hand if necessary. Is there a way that I can convert all my MS Word inline citations to the \cite{author,date} LaTeX format so that when I copy and paste into LaTeX the citations are recognized automatically? Do you have any other suggestions?

Answer 1

This article by Karsten Jahn is probably the best and simplest solution I came across: https://www.k-jahn.de/2012/02/22/exporting-a-word-library-to-latexbibtex/ <- broken link

Took less than 5 minutes to convert the whole bibliography. It can be used with recent versions of MS Word. Only difference is that you should place the file in

C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Bibliography\Style

And you have to insert this element on line 90, as Markus Hartmeier pointed out in the comments - otherwise it won't appear in the list:

<xsl:template match="b:StyleNameLocalized">
  <xsl:text>Bibtex Export</xsl:text> 
</xsl:template>

Answer 2

You could have a look on the online service provided by Makino, Takaki
or, better, download the perl script from the same page.

It worked for me, sometimes using some sed editing as preprocessing.

Or, likely better, have a look to cb2BiB that seems to be much more powerful, but I discovered to late :(

Answer 3

I've just done this. There are two steps to take:

Convert your EndNote Library to BibTeX format, which can be done relatively easily in EndNote:

1. Edit the BibTeX Export endnote style to change the output template. I'd rather use JabRef to make my citekeys to pick up the multiple AuthorYear exceptions, so you can delete the "Label" in "@article{|Label,|"
2. Export the library by using File->Export to a .txt file with formatting provided by your custom BibTeX Export style.
3. Change the extension to .bib and open in JabRef (I've had some encoding trouble by making a new library and trying to import). Change your citekey generation format to the default AuthorYear template if you've changed it.
4. Generate citekeys using JabRef. Take note of the few citekeys that have an "a" appended to the end--these are the multiple AuthorYear exceptions that you might have to edit in text. If there aren't any, you're golden.

Now you just have to get all of the citations in your Word document to match:

1. Edit the BibTeX Export endnote style to change the citation template to what you want in text (ie, \parencite{AuthorYear} for BibLaTeX or \cite{AuthorYear} for natbib and BibTeX). Change the Ambiguous Citations section to "Add a letter after the year"(2000a,2000b).
2. Format bibliography in your Word document using your custom BibTeX export style. Make sure your AuthorYear exceptions are referencing the correct paper.

I reformatted a whole paper before I figured out that the default JabRef citekey generator was close enough to AuthorYear to make it work with an EndNote Style. Good luck!

Answer 4

I used a semi-automated approach. First, I had my referenced embedded in Word with Mendeley. You can sync your Mendeley library with Bibtex (Tools > Options > Bibtex). In my word document, I created a custom citation style which replaced each of the embedded citations with \cite{[Last name of first author][year]}. The default citation key in Mendeley is [Last name of first author][year], so Latex will recognize this as the proper citation. You will have to double check the citations if you have multiple papers from the same author in the same year, or if you have changed from the default citation key. In any case, this gets most of the work done for you.

So just use this style in Mendeley and copy-paste the text: http://csl.mendeley.com/styles/497312871/bibtex-2

Answer 5

I have created a python package for this: https://pypi.org/project/ref2tex/

it is open source, welcome to contibute https://github.com/sahraoui17/ref2tex