Record numbering in Endnote 7.7

EndNote EndNote General
1

I’m drafting an article in Google Docs.

Because Endnote provides no integration with Google Docs, I’m manually inserting the field codes in this document in the form {Author, Year, Record Number}, e.g. {Austin, 2006 #843}. The record number is taken from my Endnote desktop application.

The idea is that if I’d later copy/paste my text with the field codes from Google Docs into Word (with CWYW), I can easily generate the references / bibliography with the press of a button in Word.

This is how I discovered that, for a given Endnote reference in my library, the record numbers on my PC and Mac computers are not necessarily identical. This obviously hampers my workflow. 

For instance, {Austin, 2006 # 843 } and {Austin, 2006 # 870 } evoke different responses from Endnote when generating references / bibliography on either the Windows or Mac computer.

Practically, this means that I should use one of my machines as the ‘single source of truth’ and only create Word documents (with proper references / bibliography) there.

I’m aware that record numbering has been an issue for some time in Endnote. But I’m really surprised that this hasn’t been addressed programmatically until now, or so it seems.

Will this issue be sorted in the foreseeable future?

I’m on Endnote 7.7, both on my PC and Mac.

3

Hi Leanne,

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Before I implement any changes, can I pls verify my understanding and raise the following points?

First, am I right in thinking that this change to use Page Numbers rather than Record Numbers should be made on each computer used in writing the document?

Second, this change would also affect any previously written Google Docs still using the Author/Year/Record Number format? (In other words, it would require some additional manual steps to generate the proper references / bibliography for such ‘legacy’ documents, i.e. reverting back to the default Author/Year/Record Number format in the preferences.)

Third, the fact that some journals provide abbreviated page numbers like 345-56 instead of 345-356 won’t be an issue as the match is a simple string comparison. Thus, as per the example, the page numbers won’t need changing from 345-56 to 345-356?

Fourth, when page numbers are absent (e.g. in books), the solution would still work?