I would love for the style editor (bibliography template in specific!) to live show the effects of your changes on a dummy-reference. Like in the same window.
Right now it is really hard to get it right and you have to close down and view the effects and then go back in and edit, and continue on for a very long time until you hopefully eventually get it right.
Also - that whole feature could use a bit more user friendliness
It would also be VERY helpful if the fields that actually display in the used reference style could be marked in the reference/edit metadata window. That could help users understand why data is not showing in the final output of references and what fields to choose when manually entering references or editing. A button to show/hide used/unused fields or a highlight or a different color or something.
I agree, whole heartedly! a output style view during editing is long overdue, and often requested. It would be better than thousands of named styles, which are difficult to sort thru to find one similar to your needs as well. Â
But you don’t have to close it, just save or “save as” the manipulated output style, make sure that the library view - with that version name of the style selected in the Endnote library window’s dropdown box (at the top), and then look at a “preview” (see yellow highlighted option in image attached) of one of your citations which would reflect the correct template that is being edited.Â
Set the windows so you can view the library and the editing output style windows. Â
This doesn’t help at all though, if you are trying to adjust the citation or the footnote templates in an output style! Â
There is also a quick preview in the output style manager itself, but only of Journal, book, book section templates, if you are trying to run thru some of your existing styles to try to find a similar bibliographic style. Â
Wow! I had NO idea that it would update the output in the reference-window automatically if you only managed to view both windows simultanously while saving. Thank you so much, will save me a huge amount of time.
But those “quick previews inside the ouput style manager” you refer to I cannot seem to find… Could you maybe be so kind to send a capture of this feature as well?
Thanks for this, had not noticed that feature either.
But just to be sure - there is no way to get EndNote to correspond the selected output style with what fields that will show when you edit or add a reference from scratch? I mean it would be so good if it could be more obvious what fields to fill out, according to what would be used in that selected style of yours.
Please see attached pdf for clarification of my question.
