I have almost 1,000 references of all reference types. I have been creating new groups and wanting to allocate references to them. So I thought a shortcut would be to put the search term in the search bar. The search term can be a word (e.g., advertise) or a name (e.g., Silverman).
Instead of just getting references containing those terms I get a slew of others which are irrelevant. But the original 1,000 references is reduced to a subset. For example with Silverman I get 77 citations but only 21 actually contain Silverman. I have checked other fields such as secondary title, journal name etc and the search term is not present. However, the subset does include the target term.
The serious problem with quick search is that it searches the entire library including PDF, so if Silverman is referenced in a PDF, it comes up in the search… I never use quick search for this reason. Here is the help section from X8.
Quick Search
The Quick Search text box allows you to quickly search your entire library (and PDFs and PDF Notes) by typing a single word or a phrase into the text box. EndNote executes a general search of all fields. Use the drop-down list to select a recent search term.
EndNote uses an implied AND Boolean operator when you enter two or more adjacent terms in Quick Search. For example, entering rainbow trout fish farm is equivalent to entering rainbow AND trout AND fish AND farm.
Use double quotation marks (" " ) to search for exact phrases and to override the implied AND Boolean.
You can click in the text box or press + Option+F to move the cursor to the box. Use the drop-down list to select “Any Field” or a specific field to search, and press Return.
If you need to perform a more specific or complicated search, use “The Search Panel”.