I had the same problem and I contacted Thomson Reuters. The solution they gave me helped. Hope this helps others too…
To resolve this, please save a backup of your Word document and follow the steps:
On a Mac:
- Make a backup of your document.
- Choose the “Tools > EndNote > Unformat Citations” or “Convert to Unformatted Citations” command, which will remove the reference list and revert the citations.
- Press [Apple]+A on the keyboard to highlight everything.
- Press [Apple]+6 (above the “T” and “Y” key) to remove any additional hidden field codes.
- Press [Apple]+C to copy the highlighted text.
-
Open a new document and press [Apple]+V to paste.
Note: If you have citations in footnotes, you will need to click in the footnotes section and repeat steps 3- 6.
You should now be able to format this cleaned up version of the document without running into problems.
However, if the issue happens with all documents then it may be due to damaged Word Preferences.
Note: If you have already followed the steps from above Knowledgebase for resetting Word preferences, then you can follow the steps below for resolving this issue.
Step 1: Click Go menu > Applications > Microsoft Office 2011 > Office > Startup > Word and delete the “EndNote CWYW Word 2011.bundle” file.
Step 2: Open EndNote X7 > Click EndNote X7 menu > Customizer > Check the “Cite While You Write" option > Click next until the Customizer is finished.
In regards to your query about the EndNote not recognizing the references in old Word document. You have mentioned that you have tried unformatting the references, still the issue persists. Please verify if the field codes are present in the documents. To verify if field codes are present, highlight the entire text in the document and do a right click and choose Toggle field codes. If the field codes are present, then you will see some strange texts in your Word document.
If the field codes are not present, I am sorry you might have to find a back up copy of the document that still has field codes in it.