Incredibly slow citation insertion and editing

EndNote EndNote General
1

Hi guys,

I’m having a huge issue.

I am working on my PhD dissertation, which is now 334 pages, 74739 words, and 678 citations long.

I use Word 2007 + EndNote X2 and, although I know X2 is no longer supported, I’m really hoping you guys can help.

My problem is the following.

  1. Every time I add a new reference in a footnote, I have to wait 40 seconds before Word is “usable again” because the process of adding an EndNote reference makes Word temporarily unresponsive for some reason.

  2. Further 10 seconds are necessary before the Edit Citation window shows up after I click on the command (during those 10 seconds Word is obviously unresponsive…again!)

  3. Once I have edited the citation by adding the pages, I click “OK” and I have to wait other 40 seconds before Word becomes responsive again.

Basically, every action I take involving EndNote makes Word go unresponsive for several seconds. This means that for each and every reference I add, I waste 90 seconds, that is 1minute and 30 seconds per reference. Given I have loads of referencing, I can’t waste all of this time just to add a citation!

Is there a way I can solve this issue?

After having read some of the similar threads here, I have un-checked “Enable instant formatting”, as well as the “Scan for temporary citations” and the “Check for citation changes” options, but the issue remains. I am also working on “Draft” layout and I have deactivated the “Background repagination”, but nothing changed.

I’m desperate, I didn’t have this issue when the document was smaller… Why is this now happening? Is there anything else I can do?  

Thanks for your help!

2

There may be a corrupt citation in your document.  Have you unformated the citations to curly brackets (in the footnotes too) and then removed endnote fields?  See this knowledge base article.

After doing all that, are you inserting curly bracketed citations in the footnotes, or are they still formatting?  It doesn’t sound like you really have CWYW off as you can’t right click and insert page numbers in that case?  

3

Hello Leanne, 

Thank you for getting back to me on this issue.

I have tried fixing the field codes (like you suggested) on a copy of my document, just to make sure I wasn’t going to screw up my original file. I followed the instructions step by step, and the final bibliography has disappeared! The EndNote references are still there in the footnotes, but there is no final bibliography, not even if I click “Updace citations and bibliography”! How can that be?!

Also, I am not inserting any bracketed citations in the footnotes - the reference appear neat and normal as always.

4

Hello Leanne, 

Thank you for getting back to me on this issue.

I have tried fixing the field codes (like you suggested) on a copy of my document, just to make sure I wasn’t going to screw up my original file. I followed the instructions step by step, and the final bibliography has disappeared! The EndNote references are still there in the footnotes, but there is no final bibliography, not even if I click “Updace citations and bibliography”! How can that be?!

Also, I am not inserting any bracketed citations in the footnotes - the references appear neat and normal as always.

5

Update

The bibliography did not disappear!  It was simply automatically placed at the very end of the document, whereas I wanted it to be before the appendixes.  So, sorry for this.

I have also unformatted and reformatted my citations and actually there were a few inconsistencies between a couple of references and their equivalent in the EndNote Library (dates and publishers I had corrected some time ago).  I have re-formatted correcting the mistakes, so now all citations are consistent with my EndNote Library.

However, I’m afraid this wasn’t the issue.  I’m guessing this slowing down may be caused by the instant formatting.  I turned it off (EndNote tab → Bibliography → Instant formatting tab → click on Turn Off) and all seems to be fine…  Of course, all is manual now, which is quite painful - the instant formatting is such a handy option, why is it causing problems to Word?  Is there any way I can keep it on without having Word go crazy and unresponsive for over 1 minute  Like I said, when the document was shorter, the whole referencing and footnoting process quite fast and straightforward!

Thanks for your precious help.

6

Update

The bibliography did not disappear!  It was simply automatically placed at the very end of the document, whereas I wanted it to be before the appendixes.  So, sorry for this.

I have also unformatted and reformatted my citations and actually there were a few inconsistencies between a couple of references and their equivalent in the EndNote Library (dates and publishers I had corrected some time ago).  I have re-formatted correcting the mistakes, so now all citations are consistent with my EndNote Library.

However, I’m afraid this wasn’t the issue.  I’m guessing this slowing down may be caused by the instant formatting.  I turned it off (EndNote tab → Bibliography → Instant formatting tab → click on Turn Off) and all seems to be fine…  Of course, all is manual now, which is quite painful - the instant formatting is such a handy option, why is it causing problems to Word?  Is there any way I can keep it on without having Word go crazy and unresponsive for over 1 minute?  Like I said, when the document was shorter, the whole referencing and footnoting process quite fast and straightforward!

Thanks for your precious help

7

I suggest that you call support directly as they may be able to look at the document to see if there is something underlying the problem.  Have you tried making a copy and deleting the first 1/2 and then the last 1/2 and see if the problem goes away in one or the other?  If it does, then you can delete 1/2 of the 1/2 that retains the problem, etc, until you isolate where the problem lies?   

Do you have other add-ins - Matlab, bluetooth  enabled, equations, etc?  Some of those may conflict with an older version of Endnote.  Are there inserted images of huge sizes?  How they saved (as .png or other formats)?  Are there mega amounts of “tracked changes” in the document?  Any of these can lead to a deterioration in the speed of endnote scanning.  

comments

– Yes, after unformating and reformating, the document forgets where you want the references to be, and you have to move them again.  

– In X2 and earlier versions, since Author, Date and record number must match, if you edit one of those fields, the citation becomes unlinked from the record in the library (because it doesn’t think it matches anymore) and then relies on the embedded citation information, affectionately known as the traveling library.  This is so you can share the formated manuscript with other Endnote users who can add a reference from their library and you don’t need both libraries, but it has this kind of side effect.  In newer versions, they supposedly have altered this behavior, but I am not sure how well it works.  I just make sure I recite, or unformat reformat to catch these, over the course of a long history of revision for a specific paper.  

– there is another setting (I may also have mentioned) that may or may not exist in X2, (I think it was a later version “enhancement”) – “Link in-text citations to references in the bibliography”  option in the format/configure bibliography menu.  It is a checkbox, and if it is there, uncheck it.  That can slow down the scanning for citations in long documents.  If it isn’t there, it isn’t the issue.  

– instant formating of  a long document shouldn’t cause those extended lags.  My students have written long and varied thesises with many citations and images, and the one time I saw this problem, it was a corrupted citation, which unformating and removing fields, and reformating, fixed.  

8

Hello Leanne,

Thanks again for your answer.

I do not have any other add-in turned on. And yes, I definitely have many big images (art history thesis), but I have checked if this could be the issue by copying my file, deleting the pictures and adding/editing citations, and the lag is still there. I also deleted any sort of tracked changes but Word still goes unresponsive for several seconds.

I have also tried splitting the document in half and I have also checked the document for inconsistent citations by unformatting and reformatting everything once again, and all was fine…but the the lag persists…