Moving computers

I just got a new computer and reinstalled Endnote and all my papers.  All of that went well EXCEPT I can’t figure out where Endnote stores my display customizatons (font and font sizes, fields, author format, etc.).  I have looked through the old program files directory and copied the user/name/app data/roaming/endnote contents as well.

Anybody know which file(s) these parameters are stored in?

I may be mistaken but don’t think customized or preference settings are accessible to users for retrieval/installation – although that would be a useful feature. You might try contacting tech support and/or submitting a request on the Product Suggestion section of the forum.

Technical support

For help using EndNote

Monday – Friday, 9 a.m. – 8 p.m. Eastern (GMT -5)
+1-800-336-4474, press 4

Submit a technical support request

International support contacts

Mac or PC?  I found this thread on the location for a mac, in 2013.  I suspect on Windows it may be buried in the registry, which I prefer not to muck around with on a new machine.  

My install is for Windows!  I finally gave up and just redid my preference from scratch but I remained curious.  After doing a bit more looking, I discovered that Leanne is correct that the specific information I was seeking is stored in the registry in the following key:

HKCU\Software\ISI ResearchSoft\EndNote\Preferences

There are 78 values under that key out of a total of 763 registry keys for Endnote in general.  Note that I am the only user on this machine; if there were multiple users then there would be at least 152 more keys per user, and maybe more thatn that. 

While I am not averse to doing a registry hack to get what I want, messing with the registry is not a good idea unless you really know what you are doing and sometimes not even then unless you have a full disk image backup and 90 minutes to wait for a complete disk restore.  The key values can be changed with the registry editor, but you have to speak a bit of XML to do it since the field codes refer to XML files elsewhere in the Endnote installation (for example: you must know the number of the field you want to display in each column, not the names, and those are defined in XML documents).  How many users know that “Accession Number” is field 49?

Most Windows compliant software has reduced the amount of information stored in the registry and put it into a program specific folder under the hidden C:\progamdata\ folder.  That should really be the approach to the next release, or else there should be a simple way to export and import user specific settings, prefereably in a smallish plain text file that can easily be copied from desktop to desktop by users with only basic computer skill.

The good news about Endnote is that it is highly customizable for each user.  The bad news about Endnote is that it is hihgly customizable for each user.  Thompson Reuters can, and should, make the bad news less painful.

1 Like