# Create bibliography file with selected fields

**URL:** <https://discourse.jabref.org/t/create-bibliography-file-with-selected-fields/4461>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [August 27, 2024, 12:50pm UTC](https://discourse.jabref.org/t/create-bibliography-file-with-selected-fields/4461 "2024-08-27T12:50:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![der.flo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a4c791/32.png) [@der.flo](https://discourse.jabref.org/u/der.flo)\
**Post date:** [August 27, 2024, 12:50pm UTC](https://discourse.jabref.org/t/create-bibliography-file-with-selected-fields/4461/1 "2024-08-27T12:50:36Z")

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Dear all,

I collected ~250 entries in my database. Now I want to export a .bib file for a journal publication (~50 entries), which I collected in a group.  
The journal has specific required fields for each entry type (for example: article → author, title, journal, volume, year).  
If I export my publication-group to a bib-tex file, all groups (url, notes, groups, keywords, etc.) are exported as well.

Is there a clever way to only export the required fields of my group of entries?  
The Quality\>Cleanup feature seems to do the (unproportionaly more difficult) opposite of selecting and removing the ~20 unneccesary fields instead of selecting only the 4 required ones.

I am looking forward to any help/ suggestions.

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**Author:** ![ThiloteE](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/discourse.jabref.org/thilotee/32/1008_2.png) [@ThiloteE](https://discourse.jabref.org/u/ThiloteE)\
**Post date:** [September 2, 2024, 9:26am UTC](https://discourse.jabref.org/t/create-bibliography-file-with-selected-fields/4461/2 "2024-09-02T09:26:24Z")

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You are right, this would be nice to have and I am not quite sure how one could achieve it with JabRef currently. Since [Redesign "Manage field names & content" dialog by HoussemNasri · Pull Request #8892 · JabRef/jabref · GitHub](https://github.com/JabRef/jabref/pull/8892), the Automatic Field Editor you can remove fields, but it is not possible to select multiple fields at once or do an inversion as you propose. I think your idea would be a nice feature and you probably should create an issue at github, so that we can track it.

If push comes to shove, you could try to parse contents of your bib file via Regular Expressions (RegEx) and then delete unnecessary fields or retain the fields you want. Some texteditors, such as NotePad++ support RegEx. [https://regex101.com/](https://regex101.com/) should help.

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**Author:** ![ryan-carpenter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b487fb/32.png) [@ryan-carpenter](https://discourse.jabref.org/u/ryan-carpenter)\
**Post date:** [September 5, 2024, 7:19pm UTC](https://discourse.jabref.org/t/create-bibliography-file-with-selected-fields/4461/3 "2024-09-05T19:19:18Z")

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> [@der.flo](#):
>
> I am looking forward to any help/ suggestions.

Would you like a hand using @ThiloteE’s suggestion to use regular expressions?

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**Author:** ![der.flo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a4c791/32.png) [@der.flo](https://discourse.jabref.org/u/der.flo)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2024, 10:05am UTC](https://discourse.jabref.org/t/create-bibliography-file-with-selected-fields/4461/4 "2024-09-09T10:05:30Z")

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Thanks for the offer, but I managed to find a suitable solution.

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**Author:** ![ThiloteE](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/discourse.jabref.org/thilotee/32/1008_2.png) [@ThiloteE](https://discourse.jabref.org/u/ThiloteE)\
**Post date:** [September 16, 2024, 6:55pm UTC](https://discourse.jabref.org/t/create-bibliography-file-with-selected-fields/4461/5 "2024-09-16T18:55:51Z")

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What was your solution, if I may ask?

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**Author:** ![der.flo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a4c791/32.png) [@der.flo](https://discourse.jabref.org/u/der.flo)\
**Post date:** [September 18, 2024, 1:29pm UTC](https://discourse.jabref.org/t/create-bibliography-file-with-selected-fields/4461/6 "2024-09-18T13:29:26Z")

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Since I had to solve the problem short term, I manually edited the .bib file after the export from JabRef.  
I now added an issue for further tracking 🙂