For some reason, since I installed the new version of Endnote, the program has been downloading lots of unwanted references. I think it has something to do with the new “search for full text” feature. I’ve searched for full text a couple of times now for all of my references without PDFs. For some reason, I think Endnote must be downloading other random references during this process. In any event, this situation is incredibly annoying and inefficiently expanding my library. One solution I thought of to address this situation is to search for references not assigned to a custom group. All of the references I have chosen to download are currently assigned to various custom groups. Unfortunately, I haven’t figured out a way to do this. Does anyone else know how I can search for references that are not associated with a custom group? PLEASE say this is possible!
Remember that any search now automatically incopporates any new matches into your library.
since newly entered references get the most recent record number, I would display the record number in your library view, sort on record number and then sort again, so the most recent are at the top. These are probably the records you want to delete.
Is there a way to turn the automatic setting off? Why does EndNote now assume you want all of the search listings?
Unfortunately, the solution posted above wasn’t very helpful for me (although I appreciate the tip), because I have already done a lot of searches since updating to Endnote X2. In my case, ordering by record number and looking at the latest records lists a bunch of new references, some of which I want to keep (those I had searched for) and others that were not desired. Since I’ve done so many searches, it would be a real hassle for me to review each of the new references for relevance. Plus, some of the new references have similar titles and I may not remember which reference I want to keep.
Here are a couple of solutions that I received from customer support and elsewhere in the forums. I thought others might benefit as well from these nifty workarounds, until the EndNote development team releases a patch in the near future to turn the automatic search off.
To prevent this problem from occurring (I read this suggestion elsewhere in the forums):
Unless you don’t mind deleting excess references upfront that are downloaded when you perform a search, try the following. Create a dump library (new library that you will only use for searching). When searching, open this library as well as your reference library (perhaps you can place your dump library at bottom of the EndNote window and reference library at top). Use the dump library to search for new references. Then drag the references you want from the search results in your dump library to your regular reference library.
If you are already piled higher and deeper (received this suggestion from customer support):
Here is one possible way [resolve this problem].
First create a new blank test library. Next, in your regular library click on File > Save a Copy to save a backup copy of your regular library.
In your regular library go to the first group and click on Edit > Select All to select all the records in the group.
Click on Edit > Copy and then go to the new library and click on Edit > Paste.
Do that for each of the groups. When this is finished the test library will contain records that are in groups in your regular library.
After that you can close your regular library and click on File > Import. For data file you can choose your regular library. Click on the arrow beside the import option window and choose EndNote Library.
For duplicates choose Discard Duplicates.
The imported tab will show the records that were not already in the database. These would be the records that are not part of a group in your regular library.
Hope this is helpful.
Very helpful fix in principle, but I can’t get it to work. I am using Endnote X1 on the Mac OSX 10.5.5 and whenever I use the import function only a very small subset of my library is imported. For example, if I generate an empty new library and use the Import function (import Endnote library/discard duplicates as recommended in the post), it only imports 34 out of around 2,500 refs. I have tried this numerous times, and it always imports the same 34 references. The library database that I am importing from is closed, so nothing is selected. No error message is generated, also the 34 refs that are imported have first author names distributed throughout the alphabet, in case alphabetical sorting is associated with import order.
Does anyone have the same experience, and if so how did you resolve the problem?
Any suggestions appreciated.
I’ve occasionally had problems where EndNote only imports a few records from a file of records. This was caused by the presence of a diacritic, or some other non-standard character, in one or more of the references.
When you are importing, go to the “Text Translation” option on the import dialogue box. Experiment with some different settings, e.g. No Translation, ANSEL, Unicode (UTF-8).
I do have a lot of Greek characters in my references. Unfortunately none of the alternate text translations made a difference. Thanks for the suggestion though.