Identifying custom groups assigned within each reference

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1

The custom groups feature is a useful part of Endnote however it suffers from a major flaw in that it is not possible to scroll through references and tell which custom groups they have been assigned to. Recently working on a large project we assigned around 15 custom groups in the Endnote library that corresponded to different parts of the project.

However when we got to a stage of needing to scroll through the references and check which custom groups they had been linked to, if these were all correct, and if references have been left out of any groups they should be connected to, we found this was not possible. 

2

Amen to this! EN could just have the groups as a standard field that is automatically populated, just like Author, Title, etc. That is, when you assign a reference to a Gruop it would automatically show in the Groups field. The principle is that every identifier for a reference should have a field to belong to. Alas, such is not now the case.

But here is the manual workaround:

  1. First create a new field for all reference types with Edit/Preferences/Reference Types/Modify Reference Types. Select an unused Custom Field and label it Groups. At bottom, Apply to All Ref Types. By the way, if you make a mistake after applying and want to delete that field, you cannot just highlight the name and hit delete, you have to enter something new in the cell and erase it or else use the backspace key – in other words perform a keystroke in the cell-- otherwise the Apply to All Ref Types will be inactive. (Enhancement team – this is something minor to fix)

  2. Using Edit/Preferences/Display Fields make sure the Custom Field you have just modified is labeled Groups (Step 1 above does not do this automatically)

3. For each group, show all the references in that group in the Display Window by clicking on the group name under My Groups at the left, then go to Tools/Change-Move-Copy Fields and edit the new Groups field, typing in the name for that Group. You’ll get an “is this what you want to do” menu.

Now your Groups show up in the Display Window. Hooray! If I have not made a mistake in the documentation, this should do it. Let me know if it does not and I will review it …