Free online XLS to RIS converter

A spreadsheet of references may need to enter a citation manager or library system that accepts RIS records. Conversion is useful only when the XLS columns contain bibliographic details; ordinary spreadsheet data has no direct RIS equivalent.

What XLS is

XLS is Microsoft Excel’s legacy binary workbook format, used by Excel 97–2003 and still readable by Excel and compatible spreadsheet programs such as LibreOffice Calc. A workbook can contain multiple sheets, formulas, formatting, and data unrelated to citations.

What RIS is

RIS is a plain-text, tagged format for exchanging bibliographic records among reference managers, databases, and library systems. Tags identify fields such as record type (TY), title (TI), author (AU), and year (PY); ER ends each record. RIS supports citation import and sharing, but does not retain spreadsheet layout, formulas, or unrelated cells.

How to convert XLS to RIS

Online on 101convert.com

1. Open the XLS-to-RIS converter on 101convert.com and upload the workbook.
2. Run the conversion.
3. Download the resulting RIS file.

The converter accepts multiple files in one batch. Its per-file size limit is shown on the page.

Offline with desktop software

Python with the open-source xlrd package can read legacy XLS files on Windows, macOS, and Linux. The script below reads the first worksheet. It expects a header row with title and author, and can also use year, journal, volume, issue, start_page, end_page, doi, url, and type. Separate multiple authors with semicolons.

python -m pip install xlrd

Save this as xls_to_ris.py:

import re
import sys
import xlrd

book = xlrd.open_workbook(sys.argv[1])
sheet = book.sheet_by_index(0)
headers = {str(sheet.cell_value(0, c)).strip().lower(): c
           for c in range(sheet.ncols)}

def get(row, *names):
    for name in names:
        col = headers.get(name)
        if col is not None:
            value = sheet.cell_value(row, col)
            if value != "":
                if isinstance(value, float) and value.is_integer():
                    value = int(value)
                return re.sub(r"[\\r\\n]+", " ", str(value)).strip()
    return ""

valid_types = {"GEN", "JOUR", "BOOK", "CHAP", "CONF", "RPRT", "THES", "ELEC", "WEB"}
with open(sys.argv[2], "w", encoding="utf-8", newline="\n") as out:
    for row in range(1, sheet.nrows):
        title = get(row, "title")
        author = get(row, "author", "authors")
        if not title and not author:
            continue
        kind = get(row, "type").upper() or "GEN"
        if kind not in valid_types:
            kind = "GEN"
        out.write(f"TY  - {kind}\n")
        for name in author.split(";"):
            if name.strip():
                out.write(f"AU  - {name.strip()}\n")
        for tag, columns in [
            ("TI", ("title",)), ("PY", ("year",)),
            ("JO", ("journal", "journal title")),
            ("VL", ("volume",)), ("IS", ("issue",)),
            ("SP", ("start_page",)), ("EP", ("end_page",)),
            ("DO", ("doi",)), ("UR", ("url",))]:
            value = get(row, *columns)
            if value:
                out.write(f"{tag}  - {value}\n")
        out.write("ER  -\n\n")

Run it with the input and output filenames: python xls_to_ris.py citations.xls citations.ris. Set the type column to a valid record type such as JOUR for journal articles; otherwise the script uses GEN.

Quality and compatibility checks

Review the RIS file in the destination system: conversion cannot infer which columns represent citation fields, and unrecognized or unmapped data is omitted. The script reads only the first worksheet; adjust it for other sheets or different column names. It expects page numbers in separate start- and end-page columns. XLS formulas are read as stored results, which may be missing or stale if the workbook was not recalculated and saved in a spreadsheet program.