Strategy to remove duplicates

EndNote EndNote How To
1

EndNote X2 has the option to identify duplicates and when it finds duplicate records it shows them highlighted in the records that are displayed at that time.

My question is–what is a good strategy to use to check each set of duplicates to identify what record to delete? One reason to do this could be to see if only one of the records has an abstract or to see whether one or the other records has more information.

If I click within the library display, it will unselect the duplicates. One way to resolve this is to ctrl+click the other duplicate (that is not highlighted) and go back and forth ctrl clicking and checking through the preview window (maybe using the annotated style to see more of the record). I don’t have EndNote X2 installed on the pc where I am right now to check all of the steps.

In any case, this method that I’m describing is not intuitive. For example, it requires *not* left clicking within the window (to keep from unselecting the highlighted items).

Does anyone have any recommendations for other ways to address deleting duplicate records?

2

I don’t like the new duplicate handling either. 

But you can always recover the duplicates because they have been classed as a “group”.  So I highlight and open a duplicate record, Then go to the all records - and (sigh) scroll to find the highlighted record, or make note of the first author and click (sigh) which unselects the record - but gets me to the right neighborhood, to allow me to find and open the other duplicate record.  Now I decide which one to keep.  Unfortunately, if the one I delete is the older one, the newer one is still in the duplicated “group”.  On the otherhand, if the newer record is the one I want to delete, it disappears from the duplicate “group”. 

go back to duplicate group and deal with another record there. – or repeat the find duplicate every once in a while to eliminate those you have already dealt with, so deleting the older copy of the pair from the duplicate group. 

As a result, I TRY VERY HARD to minimize the chance of getting duplicates in my library now a days.