Citation Managers

RefWorks

Please Note: UVa's RefWorks subscription expired on August 31, 2019. Individual subscriptions are not available.

Library staff are available to answer your questions about importing your exported RefWorks citations to any of the recommended alternatives at left. Please contact us via the Ask Us link.
Below are instructions on how to export your RefWorks citations to several popular citation management programs:

How to export your citations/bibliographies from RefWorks to Zotero
(see the U of Minnesota's guide with screen captures, or follow the instructions below)

After logging in to RefWorks, locate the Quick Access Toolbar on the bottom of the right-hand menu
Click Export
You can choose to export your whole database of references by choosing All in List, or, you can export folder by folder by clicking on a folder from the folder area at right.
Under Select an Export Format, choose Bibliographic Software (EndNote, Reference Manager, ProCite)
Click on the Export References button. A browser window will appear with your references.
Right-click in the browser window and choose Save as…. Save the export on your desktop as a .txt file and name it to match your RefWorks folder.
Open your Zotero desktop app and select File, then Import.
Leave the choice "A file (BibTeX, RIS, Zotero RDF, etc.)" selected and click Next.
Find your downloaded file and click Open. Leave the next screen with Options as is, then click Next.
The citations will be imported into Zotero with the name you used to save it as its Zotero folder name.

Please Note:

File attachments will not transfer from RefWorks to Zotero. You can save the attachments on your computer and add them to Zotero manually by dragging the PDF to the appropriate citation or adding it as an attachment to the citation.
The Personal Notes and User fields in RefWorks will not transfer to Zotero. You can copy and paste this information into another field manually.
You cannot use the Zotero Word plugin in a document that contains RefWorks Write-N-Cite formatted citations or bibliographies.

How to move citations from RefWorks to Zotero

How to export your citations/bibliographies from RefWorks to EndNote

Please consult this guide

**if you are on a Mac with Mohave or a later Mac operating system, you may need to follow these procedures to get a file EndNote on your Mac will recognize.

1. Follow the steps 1-4 in the above guide to Export citations: once you get a new browser window with your citations, IGNORE THAT and return to the RefWorks window, where you should see this message in the lower right of the screen:

2. Click on the link to email your citations.
3. You'll receive a txt file in your email. Save this file to your computer, and follow Steps 6-10 in the guide above to import the citations into EndNote.