Updates made in RefMan database (eg, a spelling change in author) is not seen in the reference list.

Reference Manager Reference Manager General
1

Hi.

I came across this forum and hope that someone can help me out with a problem with Reference Manager 11.01

We recently upgraded our Office 2000 to Office 2003. I’m not sure whether this has anything to do with this problem, but now some of our users report problems with Reference Manager and Microsoft Word integration after the upgrade.

I have tried to uninstall Reference Manager from the affected machines and re-installed the app, but still they have the problem.

The problem:
Updates made in RefMan database (eg, a spelling change in author) is not seen in the reference list.

example: I update the author in the databse (see below) but  this update is not seen in the word document when generating a new bibliography IF the actuall insert of the reference was made a few weeks ago . If a new insertion of a reference is put in , in the same document, any updates in the databse is seen instantly in the document.  Also assigning other output style is correctly performed by the program and is seen in the word document instantly.

When clicking “edit data base reference” in the word document, it opens the updated reference, thus I cannot even see a referencein the refMAN database looking like ref 1 below.

    ref 1: MMSO. Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities (MedDRA). MeDRA.  Last update: 2009; Cited: 2009 Mar. 18. URL:http://meddramsso.com/MSSOWeb/index.htm
updated reference 1:     MSSO (The Maintenance and Support Services Organization). Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities (MedDRA). MeDRA.  Last update: 2009; Cited: 2009 Mar. 18. URL:http://meddramsso.com/MSSOWeb/index.htm

Presumably the problem arose when we updated to word 2003.

Thanks!

2

I assume that Ref Man, like Endnote (which I use) matches items to the database by Author name, year and a record locator.  When you change the author name in the database, you break the unique combination of identifiers, so in the document it assumes the matching reference is no longer in the library and it keeps the old one in the document, and won’t update it.  Newly inserted refs are consistent with the library entry, so they are correct.  The simplest way to fix it, is to delete the offending reference and reinsert it. In endnote at least, there are more complicated methods, but that is the easiest.  alternatively (at least this works in Endnote) unformat the document and reformat it.  The refs that no longer have a matching reference will come up as not matching, and you can correct them to the right spelling or select the corrected reference for insertion.  (this - is the best way if there are a bunch of these, and you aren’t sure where they all are).