EndNote X2 changes references

I’m using EndNote X2.0.1 (Bld 3514) and Word 2007 SP2. When I insert a in-line citation using CWYW, it appears to enter correctly, but previous citations are randomly changed. If I insert a later citation, the one that originally appeared correct is also then randomly changed. These random changes do not happen to all citations. It appears that this problem does not occur at the beginning of the paper, but I do begin to see it by the 50th citation.

I have tried unstalling and then reinstalling EndNote and using it to rebuild my database, but this has not solved the problem. Needless to say, this is about the worst thing I can imagine this program doing. I very badly need help with this ASAP. Thanks.

This is probably due to a corrupted citation.  Try following the link from this FAQ to clean up the field codes. 

I’ve gone through the steps of unformatting, stripping out the codes, and copying to a new document. After reformatting, this does seem to work. However, the false references that have been inserted is not a simple shift. It seems to be much more random than that. For the other paper that was affected, to get the correct references, I see no alternative to going through hundreds of references and redoing them. I do keep backups of my files, but I don’t know when this problem first arose. I would have needed to have kept multiple versions to have been able to have had a record of the correct references.

This remains about the worst thing I can imagine this program having done. I wish I knew what had triggered the problem. Was it something I could possibly have been aware of? If the problem is a corrupted citation, then couldn’t EndNote provide a utility that would be capable of checking the citations and informing the user of a corrupt citation? I never entered a citation manually; I always used CWYW to insert citations, and I had automatic formatting turned on.

I’ve used EndNote for many years and loved it. I hope the people developing this program will address this serious bug. At the very least, users should be warned of the possibility of this happening.

When you unformat the references, are the curly bracketed versions correct, or incorrect? 

Are there any that don’t get reverted?  (which would suggest that was the corrupted citation). 

I have never heard of a “random” change.   Check your private messages here. 

This probably should be obvious, but I can’t figure out how to view private messages. I’ve seen other posting referring to a private messages tab, but I can’t find that tab.

I did find a reference missing a closing curly bracket, which I corrected. I have been going through my notes one at a time trying to fix them; I’ve only made it through a few of the many that appear messed up. In one case, there was a set of references I had created by using “insert” in the “edit citations” window. They were in the correct location, but the entire set had been duplicated. In another case, the reference was correct but the page number was not. The page number that was shown was incorrect; in fact, it was out of the possible range of page numbers for this reference. I have not found a case where I had put in a reference with the same incorrect page number. Certainly it wasn’t in the next few references in my paper. Many of the incorrect references are not simply followed (or preceded) by the correct reference. I did find one place where there correct reference was several references later. I downloaded the Word file containing a macro that was supposed to fix the shifts. It not only did not shift the references, it altered the formatting of the paper including apparently inserting unprintable characters. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact my references are in footnotes?

There is a little tiny grey “envelope” under the words “go to” or Search in the upper right hand corner of the browser window?  (it should say something like “1 message” under it if you have a private message there).

I am having the same problem of shifted citations, which I have now discovered in several chapters of a book I am working on. This is disastrous. I cannot see any corrupted citations suggested by your methods, and in my case citations in the text and in footnotes are totally messed up, generally shifted DOWN, not up, and merged with others in some cases.

We are talking of a hundred citations and 40 footnotes in one chapter alone! I have used Endnote for many years, and this problem only appeared with recent upgrades. Has anybody a solution to this? I cannot go on using Endnote if it has such a major bug in it, but at the moment I am hostage to the program since I have hundreds of pages of text and notes taken over the years already in this form, now with potentially disastrous citation errors in each file.

 If they are unformatted (on a copy) are the curly bracketed placements  correct? 

If nothing in this discussion has helped, please  contact thier Technical Support.!  They may be able to help you, if the suggestions here don’t help. 

I am not aware of any thing in X3 that should cause this to happen. 

You haven’t told us which operating system, which word processor or version and I can only assume you meant X3 as you changed the topic to that. 

My apologies for the missing info. I am pretty upset, since I have taken a leave to work at full speed on this book.

I am using Endnote X3 under Windows XP and Word 2007. I checked all the curly braces in the unformatted version, both in the text and in footnotes (which are also shifted), and they all seem fine. In my case, the citations are shifted DOWN, not up. They are then often merged with other citations as a consequence, so that it is not a simple case of displacement. This problem showed up a year ago, I think in an earlier version of Endnote, which is why I upgraded to X3. I fixed it using a macro which the tech support sent to me, called “Shifted citaions (down).doc”. However it does not work at all in the present case.

The real problem is that since I do not know what causes this problem, I do not know when it might show up and ruin months of work. I would gladly drop Endnote right now if I could find a program that allows cutting and pasting and handles footnotes and bibliography. I cannot imagine anyone buying a program which warns you up front that revising text may completely mess it up!

I have only ever had this kind of problem when I tried to put a semicolon in the suffix of a reference in an older version, and I revise text all the time.  If the curly brackets are correct, there must be something in a ref that is “pushing” them down.  I assume that in the document, everything is fine up to a point?  and then after that it is messed up?  there must be something strang at that point… I would work with CWYW off, until you figure out what it is, enlisting Tech support to find out. 

I encountered the problem with X2. I never received a satisfactory explanation for this behavior. Obviously it is a major bug. I spent many hours manually correcting the problem, and I lost several citations. The fact that EndNote would sometimes put two citations where only one should have been made it impossible to reshift other than by hand.

The problem appears to occur when EndNote reformats. Any one wishing to avoid this problem should turn off the automatic reformatting option. (I think this is a “feature” that should be removed.) I don’t believe that using CWYW to insert a reference causes a problem. It should, however, only be used in the mode where it inserts the unformatted citation with curly brackets. All writing should be done with a version of the work that has never been reformatted by EndNote. When a formatted version is needed, be sure that is done with a copy of the file, and that it is checked. If changes need to be made, the formatted file should be deleted and the changes made only in the pristine unformatted file. A copy of it can then be reformatted (and checked). No file should ever be reformatted more than once by EndNote.

I used to think EndNote was a wonderful research aid and highly recommended it to colleagues. Apparently the problem of moving citations occurs infrequently, but the consequences are so severe that it should be at the top of the pile of things to fix. The fact that a new version, X3, was released with the bug intact certainly suggests that the developers do not consider it as important as adding new features that can drive users to upgrade.

Thank you for your response. I have used Endnote since the early days, and never had this problem until Endnote 9, I recall. I subsequently upgraded to X3 because I thought that it would not cause this kind of problem. Speaking to the technicians convinced me that the current developers don’t  seem to understand, or perhaps don’t care, what causes the problem. Those of us who write cannot to constantly subject to the threat that months of work can be screwed up by some unknown bug in Endnote.

So let me move to the obvious question. Are there programs out there that can read in Endnote libraries, convert Endnote citations into their own, and not ask us to refrain from cutting and pasting from our research notes into our texts (which in itself is an extraordinary, to my opinion fatal, restraint in any program). Do any Endnote programmers care to respond?Does anyone have experience with other programs?

After many interactions with tech support, the answer is that no one really knows why citations get shifted. In my case, the first text citation group is fine, but the second one is the same as the original first, the third the same as the original second, and so on. Then the last text citation is shifted into the first footnote citation, and the original one there is displaced onto the second footnote citations, and so on. The last orginal citation in the footnotes disappears in this process.Using a macro called Shift Citations (down).doc did not help. The only remedy is to enter them all again and pray that it does not happen again.

Some other relevant info. I was told that this problem appeared in Endnote 11 and after. I was using Endnote 9 before upgrading. I was also told that it can occur even under X3 when one tries to format docs based on earler versions of Endnote. I was also told that Smart Tags may cause some problems. And I was told that X3 and X4 do not have the citation shifting problem on documents built from scratch within these versions. 

– Just to add my own two cents worth (and my last in this thread, I hope!) –

With regard to upgrading versions of Word and Endnote (or any software upgrade!), I might suggest that users back up everything, unformat documents they are likely to continue working on, back to the curly bracketed stage.  Back those up too. Uninstall the old version of Endnote prior to installing the new, and start continuing any work on the unformatted version with  the new software.  If you forget to unformat, - or want to copy something from an old document, unformat it before adding any new citations, and reformat with the new software. 

Fingers crossed, sunny skies and warm winds will greet you from now on in your Endnote experience 

(From a frost bitten, 2nd consecutive school snow day in Kansas City!  The kids are ecstatic!  Me, not so much.)

Thanks for all your help.

I am using X4 with Word 2007, Windows 7 and am having the same problems.  In addition I had at least several sources salt themselves throughout the document.  This is a book length document, some 200,000+ words.  I have around 700 sources and over 10,000 citations and am not finished.  I did unformat the citations.  The bogus citations stayed as they were.  If there were other citations in a group that included the bogus citation, they also stayed as they were.  After removing all of these manually I converted the citations back and lost 7 sources from the bibliography.  This may have been due to the items I removed.  The remaining sources looked correct at a glance, but I had 28 (!!!Invalid Citations!!!).  I removed them manually. 

Without making any assumption that source fields were corrupt, I re entered most of these citations again without a problem.  That would indicate perhaps they are not corrupt.  I have recently spent about 200 hours correcting this mess.  If I do a bibliography manually these things can never happen.  I feel locked in to the program at this point, too, but will not use it again.  CWYW is turned off and assigning links is turned off.  I have received a lot of help in correcting my many problems but they only work for a day or two.  I think there are major bugs in the CWYW feature.  If it worked as it should it would be a dream come true.  I also used X2 with similar problems.

I have provided support and training for numerous academic staff, researchers and postgraduate students who use EndNote … since version X, and have only seen this problem occur a few times. The most recent occasion - when a PhD student employed a editor to assist with proof reading. The editor was not familiar with EndNote, and not provided direction to the contrary … attempted to manually edit footnotes created by EndNote.

I am not suggesting that you have tried to edit the citations, or done anything else wrong; but I suspect that the problems you describe relate to corruption of the EndNote field codes in the document, rather than in the references themselves. And that even though you have identified the corrupt citations - the information (corrupt field codes) associated with those citations is still embedded in the document.

Have you ever used track changes / inserted comments in this document?

I agree with Greg.  I have been using Endnote forever, on complicated documents.  Granted, I don’t use footnote styles very often, but have never seen the kind of problems you are reporting in the windows version, apart from wiped field codes when non-endnote users play aroud with citations or the bibliography or jumping versions of Word or Endnote without unformating/reformating to ensure any Word specific field coding is updated before using a different coding system… You are asking for a bit of trouble if you use tracked changes for an extended period of time, with out ever accepting all, but even that has improved in more recent versions. 

I just wanna add that the same bug occured to me in EndNote X4, OSX 10.6, Word 2011 Mac Edition. 

Citations in the second half of my document shifted on spot down with no reason whatsoever. When trying to use the “workaround” recovery .doc as suggested by the EndNote team, the citations shifts one spot further in the wrong direction. I have contacted support and await their solution.

This bug just remove all my trust in EndNote. Fortunally it occured when I was “only” writing on a 40+ page document a while before deadline. When I start writing on my 250+ pages PhD thesis I cannot see how I can possible trust EndNote. If such a bug occurs shortly before deadline in will have severe consequences.

Thomson Reuters should put ALL effort into fixing this bug. It is absolutely not acceptable and if the mistrust hasen’t reflected in your sales figures yet, then I am sure it will soon.