I work in a company that uses many EndNote libraries on a shared server. In the past week or so, we have encountered a problem in which a user is working in a library and gets the “your library may be damaged; use the recover library tool” error message. I had previously only seen this when trying to open a library, but this happens when it’s already open. Then the user gets an “EndNote Error” in an endless loop (hit OK, error message pops back up) that only ends with a force-quit. This has happened to three users in four different libraries so far. When it happens, another user can open the library without incident. In fact, this happened to me first, but when another user encountered the problem using another library, I was able to open it and work with it.
What’s going on here? Is it the libraries, the users, something else? I did try recovering the library when it first happened, but I had to recover over and over (four times in maybe 20 minutes), which isn’t typical. Any ideas?
I think this can be caused by other programs in memory. I have frequently been using EndNote with no issues, minimized the window to do something else, and returned to EndNote to see the “damaged libraries” message. I am not on a server but a stand-alone machine so I am the only person that could possibly access the file and none of the other programs I was running have anything to do with EndNote or MS Word.
I have learned to just ignore the message when it appears. I too got tired of rebuilding databases that didn’t need rebuilding, so now I just kill EndNote from the Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Delete, kill application) when I get the message, and then I reload EndNote. The fresh copy doesn’t complain about a damaged library so I think the message is frequently a false positive.
While I am sure somebody from Thomson Reuters will think forcibly terminating EN is a bad idea (I have multiple daily backups of my EndNote data, you should too) it works for me. I suspect is has something to do with how EN and other applications share virtual memory; clearly somebody is not playing nice-nice with the other children. I am not sure who the naughty child is, but it is not worth my time to track them down.
I’ve had this message sometimes when EndNote tries to open two sessions on the same machine - usually as a result of having a library already open before starting up Word and clicking CWYW. It usually seems to be fixed by quitting from both Word and EndNote, then starting Word and clicking CWYW to open EndNote again.
I am not sure who the naughty child is, but it is not worth my time to track them down.