Hi! I recently switched to open office and so far I like it a great deal but the lack of bibliographic software compatibility is a big problem, so I wish all you developers godspeed! Please add me to the email list, if there is one (the most recent posts seem quite old) and I would be glad to give user feedback on what is needed/desirable in a bibliographic program or test beta versions for you.
My question is this. I have my bibliographic data file. Can I load this pre-existing data into writer's bibliographic function in one shot? Or does this have to be done reference by reference? The file exists in both zotero and endnotes formats. I'd rather load the zotero version, but the endnotes one is acceptable if that's the best that can be done. Thing is, I don't want to bother to learn to use the existing bibliography function if I have to enter all the data piece by piece and start my bibliography over from scratch. The existing database is the result of years of graduate work. And am I correct in reading the instructions that there is no 'notes' field in the current software? Would this aspect of the data be lost? And related, has anyone ever tried to configure open office's database program to handle bibliographic references? I haven't used a database program in just about forever, but I'm willing to learn again if it can be done, but I have zero programming skills. The reason I ask is - I had a very old version of endnotes on a computer that died. I switched to zotero on the new computer, and I love zotero so far, especially the screen capture functions, for web based research (although I have not tried cite as you write with it yet and am unsure if this is possible) but I am now having malware problems with firefox. I am a mac user who recently switched to a pc netbook and I am totally out of my element here. Even if I get the malware cleaned out, this could happen again, and as an academic, not getting to my bibliographic data is a HUGE problem, so a stand alone program seems better. But endnotes doesn't work with open office, and I don't want to go back to Microsoft Word, since, so far, I really like open office much better. Refworks is also web based. So my data exists in both zotero and endnotes forms, I can currently get to it in neither one of these, and both seem like bad choices under the circumstances, but I can't find a better one. Any thoughts would be welcome. Sincerely, Justine Q
