Word 2004 Mac with Endnote X1 slow and hot

EndNote EndNote General
1

Since I put in my references with Endnote X1, Word 2004 constantly uses 70% of my CPU and runs a spinning beach ball almost each time I do anything with the document. My document has 8000 words (16 pages) and about 70 references. I have a powerbook G4 1.25 with 2 GB RAM and 50 GB free hard drive space, of 200. Leopard 10.5.4. This should work fine, shouldn’t it?

Are there tricks to make Word faster? I already tried turning off “instant formatting every 30 seconds” in Word>Tools>EndnoteX1>CWYW preferences, that helped a little. Anything else hidden somewhere that I could turn off? Can I take endnote completely “offline” in word, so that there is no communication unless I ask for it? 

For next time I know I won’t put in the references until the very very final draft, but for now, I’d be grateful if there were a way out so that I can work normally and not fry my poor little laptop. 

thank you 

Message Edited by schmunzelm on 07-11-2008 06:30 PM

2

ps System is Leopard 10.5.4

3

You can turn off Instant Formatting in your document.  Go to “Tools > EndNote > Format Bibliography” and click on “Instant Formatting”.  You would then want to click on the “Turn Off” button and click OK.

If you add new references they will be inserted as temporary citations, i.e. {Author, Year #123}.  You would then go to “Tools > EndNote > Format Bibliography” and click OK any time you want to format those references and add them to the bibliography .

4

I got the same problem of slow MS Word, very hot MacBook Pro (Mac OS 10.5.5) and maximum CPU Load for Word over Minutes - even after formatting my references.

I use Word for Mac 2004, all Service Packs installed.

Can I do something additional to reduce CPU-Load on MS Word. The only thing I found was, leaving my references completely unformatted until the end of my work. On the other hand: I’m writing my thesis (phd), this will take me a year or so yet, and there will be a real big amount of references - what about program or document crashes, when I finally format the work (planned 250 pages) in the end?

Thanks for some advice.

Best regards to the Support Unit

Wolfgang Widulle 

5

a really good advice: breathe, relax, have some tea.

another one: as you say, just don’t use endnote until the very end. after my experience, and this is just a paper, not a thesis, it just keeps getting slower and slower. I wouldn’t put up with this for a whole year. I would find a different solution for putting in references until the very end. Write (ref Muller et al, 2006) and then search for all “ref” words in the end and replace them with references. Or use endnote when a new draft has taken shape, final format, not bother about duplicates, and search for 200 and 199 to find all references in the very end and replace them with the citation. Or find another system. And beware of quickly modifying an illustrator figure according to your text in the background; it won’t be quick, quit word and endnote for that. bokeh helps some, take cpu away from endnote. Also, I discovered that this “vshield” in my istat menu top 5 list is mcafee virex (required by the University, so you might have it too) going crazy after the leopard update. google “mcafee virex vshield uninstall” or something and run that uninstaller, this helped a lot. otherwise, breathe. really. I wrote my thesis a while ago, and endnote hasn’t changed since then, it is both great and slow. : ) (ps you read what the advice was, to do what I had already tried… so there’s nothing you can do)

or is there, dear moderator?

Message Edited by schmunzelm on 09-19-2008 03:17 PM

Message Edited by schmunzelm on 09-19-2008 03:18 PM

6

Hi Schmunzelm, 

Thanks for your advice. Working with unformatted references is fine, my Word-CPU-Load ist quite normal (average 10 - 25% or so). So Word and Endnote is working fine. I fear only document or program crashes in the end, when Endnote has to format hundreds of references. I’d prefer another program, if I risk my work (of course I would try with a copy), but what if the document crashs reliably? Move all references to a different program? Insert everything manually - real catastrophy in the end of a thesis … so I’d like to prevent this, before I arrive at 200 pages.

Antivirus: I work with Intego Virus Barrier - which affords only very few capacity, so that’s no problem. I also deactivated Virus Barrier, no effects on CPU-Load.

I wrote two books in the last years for my University-lectures, Endnote was working fine up to 220 pages, but I found the CPU-Load not that high with older versions of Endnote.

Anything to do? My question goes also to the Moderator or technical Support…

W. Widulle 

7

hi widulle

I’ve just finished a phd with over 500 footnotes (oxford author title) and large bibliography with about 300pages of text. It’s been going for some years and there have been ongoing scary moments between MS Word x, 2001, 2004 on Mac and EN from v.6 to my current vers.X1.

The biggest problem causing corruptions has been the active link CWYW between Word and EN. BTW, I did think of using Word’s ‘Master Document’ feature with embedded links to other discrete Word docs for each chapter but all the reports I’ve seen suggest that this too is buggy and to avoid at all costs for doing large docs eg PhD.

So here’ my normal working process for ENX1/Word2k4 on Mac OS X 10.4.11. NB: I also use a multiple clipboard applic (CopyPaste-X at http://www.copypaste-x.com/ This saves enormous amounts of time flipping back and forth between the two applics):

 ENX1:

• turn off CWYW by going to Word>Tools>Templates & Add-ins… uncheck the three add-ins (EndNote CWYW Commands.dot; EndNote Web CWYW Commands.dot; EndNote CWYW Word 2004) (NB: these must be unchecked otherwise I got the constant spinning beachball of death everytime I made changes to a record and then ENX1 would unexpectedly quit without warning!)

• Copy the record eg { , Smith 2008 #192} to one of the multiple clipboards

• using command-K (Edit>Copy Formatted) copy the record to another of the multiple clipboards

Word2k4:

•  paste the unformatted record in the  footnote (or body text ) from the multiple clipboard. Leave unformatted.

• in the same footnote, immediately after the unformatted citation, past the formatted citation, highlight and make invisible so that I have a record of what is actually meant to be there at that footnote in case of corruptions

• while I’m working I often have the Show Invisible characters on so that I can check the footnotes against the body text as it’s in progress;

• periodically at certain stage points in the writing, I would format the Bibliography. Initially, when the document was still quite small and not too many citations, this would work OK but progressively got more unstable and would give me Communication Errors between EN and Word and file corruptions.

Solved this about 1 yr ago by first doing:

• Turn on CWYW by going to Word>Tools>Templates & Add-ins… check the three add-ins (EndNote CWYW Commands.dot; EndNote Web CWYW Commands.dot; EndNote CWYW Word 2004) and do  ‘unformat all citations’ (takes about 15’). Then after making a backup to different folder, format the Bibliography from scratch (can take up to 1hr).

• Once Bibliography complete, then Word>Tools>Templates & Add-ins… uncheck the three add-ins (EndNote CWYW Commands.dot; EndNote Web CWYW Commands.dot; EndNote CWYW Word 2004)

This works for me every time now and avoids the Comm Errrors.

NB: final advice working with Word 2k4: Word has been notoriously flaky and prone to crashing if I make too many overwrites to the same file in the same folder location. So I use a Father, Mother, Daughter1, Daughter2, Daugther3 etc number of folder locations inside a main folder directory. I only ever do about 10 overwrites and then do a ‘Save As’ to the next folder in the cycle and so on. Word tends to leave a trail of temporary files and after about 30 overwrites or about 2hrs work,  I close the file so that Word removes its temp files and then I open the doc again and continue working in this way. If I end up doing to many overwrites and even with folder changes, Word will unexpectedly crash. Years ago this often caused file corruptions but in recent years has been harmless, apart from losing any unsaved work. BTW I always have autorecover/autosave ON in Word

This has worked reliably for some years for me, cheers claudio

8

Hi Claudio, 

Thanks for taking time and giving such a detailed instruction. I’ll think about your advice and use some of it. Especially working with invisible citations was very helpful, I could enter the whole specification and so be sure of what I ment years ago. I hope to finish my phd next year without upgrading word or endnote, so I hope, the record names could be used without changes of record number. I build me a document history, so everytime I work on it, I take a new copy (versions1 to …145), and of course autosave is active. Saving documents in new folders and using save as… seems also very helpful.

The last two years I wrote two textbooks for my students, about 220 pages each (word and endnote) this was working quite fine, without major crashes, but the new versions on Mac OS 10.5 cause this maximum CPU-load, so I want to take care.

Thanks again and all the best

Wolfgang 

9

Not having ever worked with the Mac version, Isn’t it sufficient to turn off CYWY from the format bibliography menu?  It certainly works, even on my student’s multi-chaptered thesises, with inserted figures, and tables of contents, tables of figures, etc.  We have never had the kinds of problems that you describe. 

 

The more I look at your procedures, the more I think you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater…

 

@cpompili wrote:

 

I’ve just finished a phd with over 500 footnotes (oxford author title) and large bibliography with about 300pages of text. It’s been going for some years and there have been ongoing scary moments between MS Word x, 2001, 2004 on Mac and EN from v.6 to my current vers.X1.

 

 ENX1:

• turn off CWYW by going to Word>Tools>Templates & Add-ins… uncheck the three add-ins (EndNote CWYW Commands.dot; EndNote Web CWYW Commands.dot; EndNote CWYW Word 2004) (NB: these must be unchecked otherwise I got the constant spinning beachball of death everytime I made changes to a record and then ENX1 would unexpectedly quit without warning!)

 

This has worked reliably for some years for me, cheers claudio

Message Edited by Leanne on 10-01-2008 09:24 AM

10

Hi Leanne, 

I would be glad to have a functioning endnote, and I’m glad to hear about your positive experience. As I was working the last weeks on my thesis with disabled “instant formatting” in the CWYW-preferences, MS Word didn’t use 100% of my CPU-Load like before, CPU-Load was quite normal. I’ll try this in the hope, my document won’t crash, when I finally format my thesis.

Then I tried one thing: I changed content of some records and saved my library, so the relevant record number (used for formatting the reference) didn’t change. This calmed me a lot.

The rest I’ll see, let’s keep the baby in the bathtub.

yours, sincerely

Wolfgang 

11

wow, a lot of help, thank you. My doc is not that huge, but I also prefer not losing things to more convenience. Switching to endnote and copy-pasting the citation with apple-tab, -c, -tab, -v is much faster to my hands than mousing to tools sub-sub-menus or to the little toolbar button, even if I don’t do the hide procedure. So I don’t miss CWYW. I also found that working with cleanly unformatted citations and formatting them from time to time takes a long while but is worth it, because it’s a mess and takes forever to modify a formatted citation or insert another one in between. Sometimes I forgot to disactivate track changes when formatting, which is a mess too. Track changes may have been part of my CPU problem, I need to have it on always and it may use a lot. 

I always have my current document on the desktop. I regularly quit Word, duplicate, rename the duplicate, and collect the old backup files in a folder. I hope that’s not confusing for Word and is equal to “save as”. 

Best, Gudrun