'This document does not contain a traveling library'

EndNote EndNote General
1

I’m collaborating on a paper with a colleague.  We each have our own endnote libraries, mine is X4 on the PC, my colleague is on a mac.  The only way we can work endnote seems to be to use the ‘export travelling library’ option to pull each others references from the collaborative document, into our own endnote library.  But when I do this I get ‘this document does not contain a traveling library’.  Why can we not use the traveling library feature?  Is there a better way to colaborate on a document when we each have our own endnote libraries?

2

What versions of Endnote are you each using (I see you are using X4) and what word processor software and versions?

3

I’m using word 2010 with endnote X4 on PC, I don’t know what versions my colleague is using but they’re on the Mac platform, probably Word 2004 or 2008.

4

It is critical to know what version of endnote they are using.  I think there was a glitch in X or X2 with sharing word documents.  But I don’t want to search for it, until I know what I am looking for. 

5

OK, I’ll find out…

6

Hello:

Are all the citations formatted? Usually this particular message comes up when the citations in the document are not formatted. If they are appearing as {Author, Year, #}, they are unformatted and EndNote will not be able to export those. The original user will need to format them first, so that there are field codes in the traveling library which can then be exported.

7

Thanks for that - that was indeed the solution.  I hadn’t noticed that requirement in any of the help docs!

8

I’m glad I was able to help!

I should also mention that creating a traveling library is not exactly the ideal way of collaborating on a document since the record numbers in the new library won’t match what was inserted into the original document. It’ll work, but it may cause extra work for you down the road.

For future collaborative projects, you may want to look into using EndNote Web, which can allow you to share references over our web-based platform. This is often a better solution for collaborative projects, as EndNote desktop was really designed as a single-user solution. A subscription to EndNote Web comes free with EndNote X2 and later.

Have a great day!