How do you convince EndNote that typed text strings with parentheses or square or curly brackets are not EndNote citations? I have had this problem with typed formulas and other odd text strings, and right now EndNote is currently enamored with the phrase (2-ethylhexyl), part of a chemical name.
Every time I update the bibliography (or when the bibliography updates itself automatically when I save the document), EndNote becomes obsessed with finding this string in my EndNote library and takes a minute or two to give up and display the Search box so that I can tell it to ignore this text. While it’s doing this, my computer is temporarily locked up. Quite annoying, really. (I’m using Word 2007 and EndNote 9.)
How can I get EndNote to forget (2-ethylhexyl) and get on with its business?
Endnote searches temporary citation enclosed in delimiters. Delimiters can be ( ) , [], { }, or something you define in the preferences. It seems your preference is setup such that regular parentheses ( ) are used for delimiters. I don’t recommend that because ( ) are so often used for other purposes. That’s why, by default, Endnote uses { } as delimiters of temporary citation.
If your chemical formula or math equations contain [] or {} frequently, you can change the Endnote delimiters, such as combination of &, $ or @ characters. You need to use different characters for opening and closing delimiters, like & and $, & and @, so on.
My delimiters are and have always been set to curly brackets. We do not use curly brackets for anything else, but because we work with chemical, statistical, and other scientific terms all the time, we necessariliy use square brackets and parentheses.
It might be helpful if you would attach a screenshot that shows how you are being prompted. Maybe it’s not really the phrase that is problematic; the context around this phrase might provide a clue.
A screenshot is attached of the offending “select matching reference” dialog box. The suggested reference highlighted in the box has absolutely nothing to do with the the current document other than to contain the same text string, 2-ethylhexyl). I find it curious that the beginning parenthesis is not included in the “find” box at the top, but that may not mean anything.
Its context in the Word document is as the contents of an ordinary table cell as Bis(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate. I might add that this chemical name, bis(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate, pops up fairly frequently in my work and has not triggered this reaction from EndNote before, although other unusual combinations of parentheses or square brackets have done so in the past.
I hope this is helpful. I would like to have a general workaround for this kind of problem because I have about 20 occasional EndNote users here who get freaked out at this sort of thing!
I have found an absurdly simple solution to this particular text string: when I last opened the document, that text string acted as if it were beginning to corrupt itself, so I retyped it, and EndNote no longer gets stuck there! The original source of the text was a database extract which had been processed through Excel into the Word table.
At any rate, sorry to have made a fuss about something with such a simple solution. But an inexperienced user would be greatly flustered by this, so at least there is a simple answer available here. Thanks to all of you for responding. I’ve been watching this forum for quite a while and have learned a lot. I just never had a problem I couldn’t solve until this one.
