Syncing and folder organisation

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1

Hi I am new to Endnote and unfortunately so far the experience has been qutie frustrating, it feels like I am using a half finished product which is not very intuitive to use. I am using endnote X7.5.3 on MAC 10.11.5

My aim with using Endnote is not only in writing paper, but also use it as an organization tool for my database of PDF files. 

I have organised my PDF files in different subfolders under one big folder (let say, “Paper”). Every so often I add pdf files to different subfolder and I wish Endnote would immediate notice it and update it in my endnote library file. Unforunately  the Preferences > PDF handling > PDF auto import folder option only notice files added directly under “Paper” but not those inside subfolders under “Paper”. Does anyone know if there is a better solution?

Another thing I want to do is to sync the same library, and just as importantly keep the same folder orgnanisation using the same Endnote account across different laptop installation (say, work and home laptop). But everytime when I try to sync Endnote seems to take ridiculousy long and when it finally finishes I am getting very strange result, with lots of reference pdb with missing title information. 

All I want from Endnote is quite simple - to be able to automatically sync and keep my PDFs file organised with the folder structure I have stored locally on my harddrive. 

Can anyone offer a good solution to this?

Many thanks

2

The short answer is no, there is no other way to get endnote to recognize a new paper without it being in the designated folder – and Endnote will then move it to a new subfolder so it won’t import it again.  Importing PDFs without the necessary meta data embedded in a way that Endnote can interpret, will result in titles that are simply the name of the file that was imported.  

Endnote has it’s own PDF structure as a part of the database.  You can drag and drop PDFs to a record manually, and have the preferences set to not copy and duplicate it and just to point to it, but that is it.  Otherwise, it will store the PDF (copying it to its own folder structure) and even rename it according to the criteria you define in the preferences options.  

Syncing using the endnote online settings, can be used to maintain the library on various computers and PC and Mac platforms, but will only sync PDFs to my knowledge that are in the database structure.  

Thus you can’t maintain a link between your folder structure and Endnote, unless you construct a URL system in the URL field, which isn’t simple to automate either.