Before reading all this, read williamwong83’s subsequent response, which is much better!
Welcome to the invisible citation! – Make a copy of the current document and put it in safe place! (
Quick fix? – when you are ready to print it or PDF it or submit it, or what ever, select all and use Endnote’s convert to plain text (which removes all linkages to citation and bibliography from Endnote recognizable items) and delete it from the bibliography – if you need to revise later, go back to that copy in a safe place!
Find it and remove it from the manuscript:
Permanent fix: (still make that copy) Convert them all to unformatted citations, this will convert all the cites to the {author, year #recno} format and the ones that appear only in the bibliography will have an “@@hidden” in the brackets and you can search for that and remove the brackets and text of the one you no longer want listed in the bibliography. – then update the bibliography from the endnote ribbon/menu. see capture 2
If you are frightened or do the above or when you do this and run the update step and many citations are not finding the match in the library and prompting you to select the correct one, then there is another trick which looks horrible but works too.
Turn off the Endnote preference in word to "turn off Word’s “Show field codes instead of their values" option when openning or updating document that include citations” In word, on the endnote ribbon in Word (at least the PC version) it is called “preferences” and the option is shown in the attachment. Then Alt+F9 will show all the endnote codes in their glory – scary isn’t it. Then search the document for the word “cite hidden” and if it is a stand alone citation, carefully find the beginning and end and delete it. If it is with other citations, I am not sure I would try this as you could corrupt the document irretrievably (well actually you did make that copy and put it in a safe place, right!) see capture 3 for what it would look like and blue text you would cautiously delete. In capture3: the top is normally formated, the bottom is showing the field codes.
now carefully hit Alt+F9 again or go back and turn that preference back on, in the endnote ribbon preferences. update citations and bibliography and it should be gone. If it is just one stand alone reference,you would just delete the whole field.
BTW, I don’t use that option, – ever – I make the font of the citation itself “hidden text” using word edit font, and it is always visible (because I have my settings to show hidden text on the screen, which is usually the default anyway) but the printed version doesn’t print hidden text (also the usual default). Then I just need to search for “hidden text” as a format option. – I also can’t really figure out when I would want a paper listed in the bibliography except when I am preparing a reading list or something like that.
