I would like to import my Jabref bibliography into Libreoffice. The plugin will not let me select the style file, is there a workaround?

[oliver.kellow]

The Jabref connect will not start unless a style file is chosen and the button is non responsive.

I also have zotero, but that plugin is not showing up inside Libreoffice either, and i dont know how or what to export my database as from inside zotero…

The save file from jabref seems to have no file extension (.bib .whatever) and comes up blank if i try and use it as my libreoffice database.

I want to insert the bibliography, I guess its an index, then i must go through my document which is so far just sloppliy hand done with footnotes and correct them to reference bibliography.

I should also mention that this is a master document, due to the large amount of images in my thesis.
god only knows how this will work.

Help! I am all at sea!
Never done this before.

Windows 7, jabref 2.9.2, Librewriter 4.1.4.2

[CyanCG]

I feel very concerned by your situation, because, lately, I have been exploring different ways to use BibTeX or BibLaTeX data in LibreOffice. I do not use JabRef and do not know what export options it has, but I know that the modern BibLaTeX engine, Biber, can export a .bib file to an experimental XML format. I am currently working on a converter from this BibLaTeXML to HTML or ODT.

In the meantime, if you know a bit about LaTeX, here is what you can do to obtain a bibliography that is usable in LibreOffice:

1. Get a TeX distribution, like TeX Live (or MacTeX if you are on a Mac, or MikTeX on Windows);
2. Make a minimal LaTeX document in which you include your .bib file and process it with XeLaTeX and Biber;
3. Export either:
   • the text of the resulting PDF document using a tool such as pdftotext or Adobe Acrobat;
   • your LaTeX bibliography document to HTML or ODT using TeX4ht (this is more involved, but could be awesome).

If you choose to export just the text from the PDF, import the text in LibreOffice and style it. If you choose the TeX4ht way, you get an ODT and you can further enhance it by

• marking the bibliography entries as cross-reference targets
• converting your manual references in your thesis and linking them to the bibliography entries.

This is indeed a tedious process, but unfortunately I have not yet found a more automated alternative. I hope to get time to make my conversion tool soon…