Creating several new entries

Hi,
I’m a Zotero user, but interested in Jabref because of some of advanced features.

I create a lot of entries for old texts, without isbn or doi. I have to do it manually, and speed and convenience are of primary importance.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but in Jabref I have to create new entries one by one. The process is slow, important fields (like pages or place of publication) are in the second tab, so I have to use the mouse.

When it comes to quickness, nothing can beat Excel. I guess that editing entries directly in the table is not planned in the future? Zotero can’t do it either, but manual creation of entries is faster, because all fields are in one tab (no need to use the mouse) and you can batch edit several entries at once.

I see two possibilities to speed up your entry creation in JabRef:

JabRef is helping you on a regular basis? Please, find a way of giving back.

Thank you for your reply.

  1. First solution isn’t working. I’ve tested this book: [https://kpbc.umk.pl/dlibra/publication/9812/edition/16242/content]. It should be an easy one (it’s OCRed, and have metadata), but nothing happened. I was interested in making a list of works cited in this book.
  2. The second solution is more complicated, and probably over my technical skills.
    Thank you again, I will watch the development of jabref, in hope of introducing fast and easy entries.

For the book you tested, you can get the BibTeX entry from the website by clicking on their “BIB” icon and selecting “BIBTEX”. After copying the proposed text, you can paste it directly in the entry editor of JabRef. This will create the corresponding entry.
This is not the most convenient solution, but probably better than typing everything by hand.

You can also customize the table (Options > Customize entry types) and put some of the fields you usually need to “Required”. These will then show up in the first tab, making it quick to enter the information (we plan to restructure the entry editor in the future, so that you don’t need to use optional/required to structure the fields).