I would like to import my PDF files which have been well organized to Endnote.
However, I don’t want to have additional copy in the default folder because it really wastes the storage.
So, can I do it by import-folder?
I spent all afternoon to figure out this problem but fail to get any clue.
Thanks.
Dragging and dropping them onto the record in the library list after unticking the otherwise default Endnote preferences setting for “URLs and Links” which creates the relative copy version. But that will be tedious.
You could try to add the file location as a URL link, but again this is tedious.
Also, if you use the Find Full Text facility - which automatically retrieves most PDFs, this setting will have no impact. It will go automatically to the relative folder. - Hence, I just use Endnote to retrieve my PDFs and gave up long ago trying to organize them outside of Endnote. My lab has access to a read only version of the library where they can also access our PDF collection.
I agree that this is a waste of space - I just lost 1 GB of my hard drive space because EN copied the pdfs. Can someone clarify the reason that EN makes copies of the pdfs?
I scan through my pdf folder several times a day to read, highlight, and comment my pdfs. The EN-created folder is not convenient for this so I feel like I’m stuck with unecessary duplicates of pdfs - those that I use, and those that EN uses.
Edit: I tried deleting the contents of the pdf folder that EN (version X4.0.1) created, and EN seems to continue to work properly (except that the link to the pdf is lost). This seems to be a temporary fix for me.
IMHO (not being a developer and not employed by the Endnote people),
Mostly because if you move the library to a new location, links could break and there is no easy way to re-establish them. For example, my institute recently migrated our servers, and this would have caused havoc with my links, if they were absolute. Having the links relative meant that there was no problem.
If you don’t want them linked, you don’t need to bring them into Endnote, or you just need to attach your version the “old fashioned way” and turn off the relative link option. The good news might be, that if you change your mind, you can automatically copy all the absolute linked files to relative links at a later time. I find the folders with the PDFs of interest relatively easy to identify by either my naming conventions or those that are automatically generated by endnote when they are downloaded via “find full text” in searches.
The problem of broken links makes sense. Thanks. I’m not sure I follow you on the other topic though. Are you saying that I can import a pdf folder and tell EN to use relative links so that it does not make copies of the files? I tried turning off the option in Preferences under URLs and Links (“Copy new file attachments…”) but saw no difference when importing a folder of pdfs.
I don’t know as I never import a folder of PDFs as I feel I get incomplete and sometimes no information - and so I import from databases at all times possible and use the find full text to retrieve the PDFs.
From your experience, I would guess that like “find full text”, Endnote makes a copy of the PDF to the relative location, and I agree, it might be useful to turn that off. I suggest you make that suggestion to the developers on their website, or in the suggestions forum here?