I have lost the original Endnote library for my document, and to recreate it, I exported all the references in the document to a travelling library, which I now use as my current library. I don’t know if that was the right thing to do, though, because now this library doesn’t seem to be fully linked to the document, in the sense that if I add a new reference to the library, cite it in the text and Update Citations, the new reference appears in the References list at the end of the document, *however*, if I edit an existing reference in the library and then Update Citations, the changes that I made to that reference are not visible in the References list.
This is probably due to the fact that - as far as I know at least - EndNote does not allow you to clearly specify to which document a given library belongs to, or vice-versa, what libraries are linked to a given document.
Can anyone help put some sense back into my library, such that changes made to individual references in EndNote are also reflected in the References list upon refreshing? Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
Let me try to explain this once more. When you work on a document without the original library,Endnote uses the information in the document to create a “traveling library” and no longer looks for any changes to a reference which it doesn’t recognize in the open library. The criteria it uses, is the First Author, YEAR and record number. Exporting the traveling library gives every record a NEW record number, so Endnote will not recognize the embedded reference as the same as the copy in the new library.
The only way to fix that, is to replace the citation in the paper with the corrected reference from the new library.
If the document is not too long, you can unformat the paper and reformat it. One by one, Endnote will prompt you to insert the closest, or choose among the closest references in the existing library (skipping over and keeping any that have been inserted from the existing library - i.e… Those you inserted after creating your new library - as they already match). You felt that this was too complicated and took too long. Otherwise, you should delete and reinsert the references you are editing, so that they are now coming from the CURRENT library and not from the traveling library embedded in the manuscript. When you put an new reference in your library and insert that into the document, as long as the first author’s surname, the year and the record number don’t change, when you update that reference, it should update in your document too. But unless you TELL Endnote (by unformatting/reformatting if necessary) that the reference in the paper IS the same as the reference with a different record number in your library, Endnote won’t know that and will not make the updates to the version in the paper.
You can actually ensure that the reference link isn’t broken in the future, by putting your cursor in the citation whose reference you want to update – and using the toolbar, Edit Library reference, open the reference in the library and make your changes to the library record.