Server busy error, Word 2007, X4

Hello, there are some other posts about this problem and some fixes are described.

http://community.thomsonreuters.com/t5/EndNote-General/X4-problems-with-word-2007-update-made-no-difference/m-p/15791/highlight/true#M4760

I have restored the Endnote database. A fix that seemed to partially work involved removing all field codes from the document. My document has many non-Endnote field codes and removing them is not an option. After more tests I’ve found that removing all of the field codes does not entirely fix the problem in any case. This fix involved changing to unformatted citations, ctrl-A, ctrl-6, copy to a new document.

http://www.endnote.com/support/faqs/CWYW/faq15.asp

The ctrl-6 removes all field codes, including non-Endnote field codes. The new document created after this does work better - inserting a citation is faster and smoother - but there is still a final hangup with the server busy error. In general the hangups seem to be when Endnote says it is doing hyperlinks, right before it should complete its task.

So it appears that even if I could sacrifice all the field codes, it would not fix the problem entirely.

It appears this problem began or at the least became much worse two days ago when I made a large copy and paste into the document. Its word count went from about 13K to 30K. There are also many field codes, figures, Mathtype equations etc. I’m beginning to suspect that Endnote does not scale well. As a temporary workaround I copied and pasted the section I’m currently working into a tmp document. Its 3K words and contains many citations. Endnote is working perfectly and very quickly with it.

Is this a common experience that as the document size scales up Endnote becomes a problem and one has to in effect break the document into smaller parts to work with it?

I have sent an email to tech support and will report here if I hear anything.

Thanks

Noah

After more tests I’ve found that removing all of the field codes does not entirely fix the problem. This fix involves changing to unformatted citations, ctrl-A, ctrl-6, copy to a new document.

http://www.endnote.com/support/faqs/CWYW/faq15.asp

The ctrl-6 removes all field codes, including non-Endnote field codes. The new document created after this does work better - inserting a citation is faster and smoother - but there is still a final hangup with the server busy error. In general the hangups seem to be when Endnote says it is doing hyperlinks, right before it should complete its task.

So it appears that even if I could sacrifice all the field codes, it would not fix the problem entirely.

It appears this problem began or at the least became much worse two days ago when I made a large copy and paste into the document. Its word count went from about 13K to 30K. There are also many field codes, figures, Mathtype equations etc. I’m beginning to suspect that Endnote does not scale well. As a temporary (hopefully?) workaround I copied and pasted the section I’m currently working into a tmp document. Its 3K words and contains many citations. Endnote is working perfectly and very fast with it.

Is this a common experience that as the document size scales up Endnote becomes a problem and one has to in effect break the document into smaller parts to work with it?

I have sent an email to tech support and will report here if I hear anything.

Thanks.

Another thread has started that seems similar, and there are some interesting comments.

http://community.thomsonreuters.com/t5/EndNote-General/Endnote-X4-and-Word-2007-on-Win-7-really-slow/td-p/12492

One thing I learned from this thread is accessing bibilography preferences within word and turning off hyperlinking and automatic update of the bibliography. This appears to speed things up, but not fix the underlying problem.

Just as a note - curious experience with the new word ribbon. I’ve been using word 2007 for a while and thought the little arrow down to the right in the bottom corner of some ribbon panes meant in effect expand the pane. That seems to be an intuition from other software where similar little arrows often mean undock the pane into a separate windown. Just now I learn in word it acutally means open a dialog box. That is not intuitive. I’ll leave it at that.

Here is an update that I just sent to tech support.

For now there still is a problem, but my document is now working fast enough that I can at least work reasonably. I will try to explain. The problem is with this particular document. I can work with another smaller document with no problems. Track changes is off. 

Scan for temporary changes is now off and this is one change that definitely helped. It helped speed things up. I learned in this thread:

http://community.thomsonreuters.com/t5/EndNote-General/Endnote-X4-and-Word-2007-on-Win-7-really-slow/td-p/12492

to turn off link in-text citations to bibliography, and turn off instant formatting. This means that Endnote leaves new citations that I add in curly bracket form until I tell it to format. When I do this it does take too long and it does freeze with the server busy dialog and I have to click that at least once. This is means I can not work for a few minutes, but it only happens when I choose to the formatting so I can work around it.

I will try to post this update to the community as well. It appears from the community that other people are having this problem with word 2007 and X4 so my feeling right now is that there is a problem in Endnote that will need to be fixed.