Exporting PDFs to a separate folder

EndNote EndNote How To
1

Colleagues:

I recently encountered the need to move the PDFs linked to references on a specific topic to a folder.  The problem was that there were about 2500 references with about 2000 PDFs attached to them.  The PDFs resided in several different folders.  Searching the ENDNOTE Forum didn’t lead to an easy way to accomplish my task (but if it exists and I missed it, please let me know).  I came up with the minimal effort procedure that I could figure out.  I thought I would share it on the Forum, if for no other reason that doing so will probably shake a better process out of the tree!

To export multiple PDFs from a Group or Search Results:

Create a destination folder.

Highlight the first reference in the list with an attached PDF.

In the PDF preview pane, OPEN PDF (button with a square and arrow).

On the menu bar, click FILE, then SAVE AS.  This will pop-up a window in which you can select the destination folder.  No need to change the File Name of the PDF.

Click SAVE.

Don’t close the PDF that you just exported!

Click the RIGHT-POINTING ARROW on the toolbar (no name appears when you hover the mouse above it). That will take you to the PDF in the next reference.  If no PDF is associated with the next reference, click the right arrow until one appears.

Note that, if you click FILE, SAVE AS is greyed out and not selectable.  To make it selectable:

Click the DOWN-POINTING AROW (=PAGE DOWN) to move the PDF to the next page.

Click FILE.  Note that SAVE AS now appears in black and is selectable.  Click SAVE AS.  That pops-up the window that should still have your destination folder already selected.

Click SAVE.

Repeat as needed.

So, after saving the first PDF, click RIGHT ARROW, click DOWN ARROW, click FILE, click SAVE AS, click SAVE.

You can really speed through a group of references to save their PDFs this way.  I do wish the last SAVE button was on the tool bar. At present it is a long mouse slide away and back.  Try it and you will see what I mean. 

Hope this helps.

2

Sorry, I should have mentioned that this was done with X7 in Windows.

3

I was also looking for a way to do this and I came up with what I think my be a speedier alternative.  In my case, I wanted to export the pdfs from about 40 references but it will work with any number.  I was using endnote X7 in windows 8.1.  If you wanted to do this with all of your pdfs you could start at step 4 after locating the pdf folder for your particular endnote library.

  1. Select the references

2) Copy the references to a new libary (References - Copy to - New Libary) I called the new libary “pdf export” but any name will do

3) Find the new libary and go to the pdf folder, there you will see a number individual folders each containing one pdf

4) Do a search for *.pdf in that pdf folder - this will then list all of the pdf files

  1. Copy and paste those pdfs to a convenient destination and use as desired.

It was quick and painless.  I hope this helps.

1 Like
4

Just did this on Endnote X7 on a mac; saved me so much time! Thank you!

5

this is a brilliant solution!

6

Thank you so much for this workaround! You’ve just saved my an entire weekend of having to save 250+ individual PDFs!

7

thank you

8

Simply genious! Thank you!!

9

That was simply genious! 

Especially with the search *.pdf

Thank you so much!!

10

I just tried this on EndNote X8 for OSX and it worked like a charm.  Clarivate Analytics, please consider this as an addition for future versions of EndNote!  Export PDFs to a directory!  Super useful tool and it should be easy enough to implement.

11

Wow, I didn’t think of it that way. Thank you very much.