Endnote X4 and X5 are SLOOOOOOW!

I used to use X3 but switched (reluctantly because X3 worked so far) to X4 because I had upgraded to Office 2010.  As soon as my dissertation had > 400 references in it, any changes (i.e. additional references, removal of author/date, style change etc.) that were made took 1-2 full minutes for each and every change.  Now I’m only listing the machine I’m using to illustrate the point that it is not my equipment that’s limiting the performance.  I’m using a computational workstation with dual Xeon’s X5690’s with 72Gbs of Ram with a striped SSD array.  We’re talking 24 threads of computating power. 

On the workstation, Endnote doesn’t even tickle the CPUs but makes you wait none the less. I tried using a much lesser powered laptop and Endnote took the same amount of time, but this time slammed the CPU to 100% for 1-2 mins for each reference. 

I followed the recommendations from other members on the forums (clean the codes, remove the styles etc. etc.). Nope. No difference.

So, I thought I’d try X5.  Nothing. No difference whatsoever.  Any thoughts?

You describe your setup as a “workstation” so is it accessing EndNote via a network? Also, is the workstation’s operating system one that is compatible with EndNote X4 and EndNote X5?

As of now it’s configured with W7U (64bit).  It will be migrated over to W2K8R2Sp1 at some later date. So right now X5 is natively running.

I’ve run both EndNote X4.0.2 and EndNote X5 on a system running Windows 7 Professional (64 bit) without any speed issues.  A search of the knowledge base did not yield any information concerning problems with Windows 7 Ultimate.

Did you try unformatting then reformatting the citations? (Note: As a precaution, make a backup copy off the document.)

With so many refs, I would also turn off the hyperlinking, which can slow things down.  This is done thru the format bibliography tool. 

I have experienced the same problem, although with much fewer references (currently working with documents that holds between 50 and 100 references). As long as I only use a few references (say less than 30) X4.02 works just as well as X3 did.

I turned off hyperlinking but it had only a moderate impact. The slow response is frustrating!! I avoid adding new references while writing because it gets me off track. Seriously considering to find a different software. Changing back to X3 is not an option since I need EndNote to be compatible with Word 2011 for Mac.

If anyone has a solution I would be extremely greatful

Have you tried to disable instant formatting in CWYW? That should have a very big impact when adding references.