personal styles EndNote 7 gone after reinstallation of Windows Vista

EndNote EndNote Styles, Filters, and Connections
1

Before my system board was renewed I had two personal styles derived from General, and I had an Output Style made for special purposes, created from one of the three last unused Output Styles.

Since I reinstalled Windows Vista Home Premium and EndNote 7 I miss the self made styles.

I only found one  Display Style (is that the right word for a file with extension .ens?), in which EndNote shows All or a selection of references in a library. There had been another one, but I searched for its Name.ens but couldn’t find it. Also I miss my (edited unused reference type) with which attribute names of fields can be changed, and I miss the differently defined headers over the five fields that are shown when one opens his library (Display Flields).

Where can I find or recover these styles?

What seems to me very odd is that the only .ens style file has the following dates in the meta data of the file:

Modified July 21, 2006

Created November 25, 2009

Based on Show All

While  all other styles have creation date June 6, 2003.

2

So the mother board was replace and then was everything reinstalled, or are you using the same hard drive?  What do you mean by the “three last unused Output Styles”, because there is no limit to the number of output styles (the .ens files)? It sound more to me as if you are referring to changes made to the reference types, either creating reference types or unused fields in a reference type?  

 

Delving back into my brain on how EN7 handled these, I think reference type changes were all “saved” in the registry.  Reinstallation of EN7 probably overwrote these, and even I have been know to forget to back up my registry!  These are not stored anywhere else on the hard drive, if memory serves.  See http://lists.adeptscience.co.uk/endnote/endnote_Sep_2002/msg_2733.html for information on how to export and import this information from the registry. 

 

3

Here are a couple of things to consider:

  1. Hard drive status. If you returned your computer to the manufacturer (e.g., HP, Dell, Apple, etc.) to have the motherboard replaced, sometimes the manufacturer will restore the hard drive to the original manufacturer’s factory setting. 

  2. Styles Folder Location. If your hard drive was not restored/altered/corrupted, did you check your EndNote program settings to see that the pathway is pointing to the correct location of the Styles folder?  (Go to the EndNote toolbar, select EDIT, PREFERENCES, FOLDER LOCATION, and check the Style folder’s location.  Note that for Windows Vista, the EndNote Style folder is located in the “Documents” section.)

  3. Save Style Changes. When you adjust a Style, it’s important to save the changes (go to the EndNote toolbar, select FILE, SAVE AS), and make a backup copy then store it on a separate medium (e.g., flash drive, CD/DVD, storage card, etc.).  The same goes for modifying any of the reference templates -  in order to keep the modifications, go to the EndNote toolbar, select EDIT, PREFERENCES, REFERENCE TYPES, then the “Export” button which will export the reference templates as an .xml file.  (To restore the templates, click the “Import” button.)

4

As Leanne suggested, (name).ens files are the definitions for bibliography output, but not for the display of fields.

I’m pretty much sure what you are talking about is the Reference Type, because you made custom ones from Generic, not “General”.

Unless you deliberately saved registry data, where the reference type information was saved, the custom made reference types are all gone, so you need to re-define them again. But it shouldn’t be that hard.

Recent version of Endnote has a function to export custom made reference type, but EN7 didn’t at that time.

5

Thank you very much for your elaborate answers, explanations and corrections.

The manufacturer put in a new motherboard, and to my wish a new larger HD. My two HD’s before the crash still are available for me, though I only can attach the one or the other as slave next to the new one.

Indeed I’m confused about the terminology (and even inaccurate) of styles, types and whether refer to what I see when and where…

If I go into the Preferences and choose for Output Styles, I can edit my self made Reference Type, referreing to my R.ens file. Although this file is said to be modified on July 21, 2006 it seems to be a Style that is based on Show all, but contains nothing what I have been editing until July 25, 2006.(The terminology used by EN does really confuse me).

If I go into the Preferences pane and choose Reference Types, then I can remember that I created two reference types derived from Journal Article and gave them a name. But here I’m confused again: If I look at the roll down selection after Default Reference Type, then I see at the bottom Unused, Unused 2 and Unused 3. However, if I select Modify Reference Types… in the EndNote Preferences pane I see a similar vertically organized table having RefType names right of Generic, not quite synchronized with the list in the roll down selection menu mentioned before. I remember, though, that I edited one or the two Unused (or Unused 2) columns to make my own attribute names that would be used with either of my own created reference types. Are they (or should the be) the same as the names shown in the drop down list behind Default Reference Type, or do I mix up things? I have tried many times to fathom the structure of how EN works with these entities, but I seem to miss the meaning of the terms used in EN.

From your suggestions I think that I could try the following, but I cannot judge whether this is too tricky:

On one of the HDs there must be (a back up of) my former system registry, that could be examined, or could I even use regedit on a different place, namely the one at the slave? I more or less understand what’s told in the link that Leanne gave.

CrazyGecko suggested to regain the folder locations of the Style, Filter and Connection Folders, but I only couldn recap the location where I stored all my EndNote libraries. But! herewith I seem to found back my Display Fields!

But :frowning: If I restart EndNote, I don’t see my only recovered RefType.ens file any more, or more specific this RfType was, but is not present anymore since I changed file locations and restarted EndNote… And, there are no Unused Deault Reference Types, neither there are any Display Fields in my reopened Reference Library that uses the .ens-file and the Display Fields found back previously (i.e. before restarting EN). I can open my library because it’s in the sub menu ‘recently used libraries’, but if I choose Ctrl-O I’m directed to the place in Program Files/EndNote where I can see Connections, Examples, Filters, Palm, Spell, Styles, Templates and Term Lists, with a fresh date of change, but not my recently closed library… It’s still a mess, I think. 

I don’t understand your 3rd paragraph to save things, but that’s a serious thing to be done if everything is sane again.

I’m glad that Myoshigi understood my unclear explanation of my problems, and, as I stated, I must have a back up from my old registry. But you say that reference type information was saved, but not the custom made reference types. I really don’t understand what is the difference between reference type information and information about reference types that were custom made. Where’s the border?

I sincerely hope, from what I have written down here, makes sense to help me further, if possible!

6

I would respectfully suggest that you consider reviewing the En7 PDF manual which is available here in particular the glossary (about pg 557, near the end) which might help you interpret the different terms we have used. 

In addition, reading Chapter 15, which discusses editing the Reference Types in EN7 and Chapter 16 which addresses editing Output Styles (or Bibliography Styles) using the information you added in Reference Type fields or even newly constructed Reference Types.  Rather than try to export any registry from the slave HDs, I would redo the reference type changes, if at all possible. 

You should also try copying any old revised output styles (the .ens files) from their old now slave HD location to the folder specified in your current EN7 preferences, which in VISTA can’t be their original default, as you don’t have write access to those folders.  The usual location is an Endnote/Styles folder in MyDocuments in current versions of Endnote, so you might want to adjust that.  I probably wouldn’t try to keep it on the old HD, but you could as long as you always have that access enabled. 

Once you have all this information under your belt, you may not need to ask any further questions, but if you do, understanding the terminology will make parsing your questions and interpretting our answers, more easily. 

7

I just mentioned that registry is the place where definition of reference type is stored. By default, when you install Endnote, the installer save the “default” reference type in the registry. This default type includes “Generic” which serves as template for all other reference types, journal article, book, edited book, etc. All the field name (author, journal, year, page, etc) for each reference type will be installed as “default” definition. As you edit them, based on your demands, the change is saved in the registry.

You could have saved the registry data and transferred to the new OS using Regedit, but now, I don’t think it’s worth digging into the old HD to find it out how to do that, unless you want to reconstruct registry data from slave IDE HD using this kind of information here at Microsoft.

8

 

 I don’t understand your 3rd paragraph to save things, but that’s a serious thing to be done if everything is sane again.

 

Very sorry about the depth of the problem and the “save things” suggestion is future-oriented and unfortunately will not correct the current situation.  Both Myoshigi and Leanne’s observation that EndNote 7 stored reference information in the registry which is now on the “defunct” hard drive that’s been replaced on your system does complicate matters.  (it’s also a surprise to me that EndNote 7 would even work with Windows Vista.) While it may not be impossible to locate and transfer the info now, as Myoshigi noted in his last posting would not be worth your time and effort.  Better to start over and re-create what you did.