Hi…everybody? I saw that Leanne was logged on, so I’ve signed up for the forum in hopes that it will be as useful as the discussion list (and Leanne was a big part of that!). Now that I’m successfully registered, I see that Leanne is also the go-to person for forum protocol. Way to go, chica!
But, I’m here because I’ve got issues with Endnotes: I moved up to ENX1 and rather quickly corrupted my library. This is a library that began with Endnotes 1.0, so…well, okay, perhaps it’s been abused. The always-helpful Endnotes helpfolks successfully fixed the library but,
I now get a message every time I edit a reference that tells me I must SAVE the file or I will lose my edits. This is a new “feature”? It’s scary, to start, and the instructions do still say that Endnotes will automatically save all edits. So what’s the scoop? Do I really need to say “yes” everytime it asks me whether I want to save the edits? I mean, why would I edit a reference if I didn’t want to save it? Duh!!
2) The very nice and helpful tech told me I shouldn’t keep my library on my flashdrive. This is something I’ve been doing for years, but he claims it’s the reason my library became corrupted. Okay…so maybe keeping the library on flashdrive that got swapped back and forth from Word 2007 on Windows XP to Word 2002 on Vista might be giving Endnotes a headache. I’m okay with that. My real question is one of procedure. I work at home and at the office, and I want to be able to enter data to my library from either location. What is the most seamless way to handle that?
Thanks, buddies… I trust you’re all still out there!
There are a couple of good and free ways of doing this. I used to use SyncToy, which is a lot better than the word “toy” might imply. I would sync my endnote directory (with it’s libraries and pdfs) from my desktop to laptop. You could also easily sync your computers with a flash drive. The whole point is that it takes the newer files and overwrites the older ones. In 3 or 4 years, it’s never messed up once. I also keep good backups though.
Recently, I got tired of having to run sync toy repeatedly and having to “think” about when syncing was necessary. I’ve begun using Windows Live Sync to sync most of my files (including EndNote libraries and pdfs) over the internet. This is a really great solution, because when I come home, my desktop is already synced. And if I work on the desktop, when I go back to work with the laptop, it gets all the changes too. As a final suggestion, I created a folder named Synced and put most of the files I need to sync inside of it. I found that having one folder is clearer and easier to setup when using Windows Live Sync.
I now use SyncToy just for syncing really large files – not practical to do over the internet.
Other alternatives include Windows Live Mesh (a beta product which syncs just like Live Sync, but has some extra features as well like having documents accessible on the web) or DropBox (a paid service that does pretty much the same thing as Live Sync).
I like the idea of live sync. I wish I can switch to that. But, the problem of the automatic sync is, if my endnote library is corrupted, all my sync’d fies are all corrupted automatically. To avoid this problem, I need a scheduled backup, say every other day, to keep healthy files. I don’t know why it happens so often, but I encounter library file corruption almost every 4-5 months. That’s quite often, as compared to the MTBF hours of hard drive. I believe it is related to something in the .data folder.
Anyway, I’m still using my favorite manual sync tool, which is called CopyTo as I mentioned somewhere. And I have a Acronis TrueImage to take care scheduled mirroring.
Using PCs (I mean, Personal Computers in general), it seems my life never gets simpler. It only gets more complicated.
