Dear Michael Ruggiero,
If you are facing problems during preparation of an input from CIF file,
you can use gdis code (http://gdis.sourceforge.net/ ; version 0.99).
Open CIF file with gdis and then save as 'filename.pwi'. The code
understand the extension 'pwi' and prepare a simple input file for
Quantum ESPRESSO. You can also use this code to prepare simple inputs
for many different ab-initio codes.
I hope it helps.
Mutlu.
--
PhD. Mutlu COLAKOGULLARI
Trakya Universitesi
Fen Fakultesi
Fizik Bolumu