EndNote 8 crashes on Sierra (10.12.4)

Unfortunately, I cannot cope with this instability of software at the moment.

Any alternative to EndNote that you tested and is working fine on Mac.

I have been having the same problem for about 2 months not. I cannot pinpoint the exact time it started happening so am not sure what brought the problem on. It crashes over 50% of the time on openining EndNote and once it EndNote it typically crashes within 2-5 minutes of interaction. Opening a reference with an attached pdf is particularly problematic. It crashes so frequently that it is severly impacting my productivity. I’ve recentily updated my OS from Sierra 10.12.4 to 10.12.5. This did NOT resolve the problem. Although I’m incredibly frustrated by the crashing, I’m comforted in finding I’m not the only one experiencing this problem.

I am having the same issue, I just spent the past week onboarding to endnote. Thought I had chosen the right system and it turns out that it is extremely unstable. This is frustrating. I am still in my trial 30 day period. I am just frustrated abount the time spent learning, noting, etc. I thought I was having an anaomly regarding the crashes and figured it work itself out, but now that I’m actually working on a reasearch paper, this is extremely annonying!!! I can not believe this is happening. I am so disappointed!

Hi, guys. Doing OS Sierra 10.12.5 - still no change in my EndNote mess ups. Incredibly frustrating.

Any temporary solutions (apart from scrapping a 6-month old MacBook Pro Touch Bar) yet?

I have the same issue with Endnote 8 and Sierra 10.12.5.  Endnote freezes/hangs when clicking on or viewing a reference with an attached PDF with annotations saved to it (Mine are marked with highlighting). The only solution I’ve found is to same the PDF to another location (desktop), delete the reference from Endnote, and then re-import it.  Not really practical, but if you only have a few annotated PDFs you are working with, can allow your work to continue temporarily.

Hope they fix this bug soon, its been awhile from what I can see in this thread!

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I recommend two things for those on this thread experiencing either a beachball, crash, etc., to:

  1. Update to Mac X8.0.1, EndNote X8 menu option -> Check for Updates 

  2. Contact EndNote Support, http://endnote.com/support to get an individualized diagnosis if the behavior continues

I apologize for your troubles. 

Thanks all,

Meredith M. 

Done all of that but no solution.

Thanks this owrked for me 

Thanks this worked for me after endnote froze with increasing frequency every time I wanted to open a PDF. I hope it stays this way. 

This problem is a disaster. It is been continuous for the last several months. I am in touch with tech support and despite software updates, it persists. They say the crashing happens with applications that rely on Apple’s PDFkit and they are waiting for an update from Apple. Perhaps, but no other app I use is crashing. I am dumbfounded such a critical error could go on for so long.

I have since gotten a brand new computer and intalled a fresh copy of EndNote. Same problem.

If I did not invest hundreds (thousands?) of hours building up my EndNote libraries, I would quickly switch to a different product. I held out for years putting my PDFs in EndNote b/c I have always been hesitant about trusting the clunky old-fashioned feeling application to manage all my scientific papers. Now my fears have turned into a nightmare.

Hi everyone, 

Just wondering if anyone has updated to Sierra 10.12.6 yet? If you have, are you still experiencing the continous hanging/crashing on Endnote X8?

Also just wondering if anyone else has experienced issue with upgrading from Endnote X8.0.0.12000 to X8.0.1.12626? 
For some unknown reason this update does not work for me. After following all the usual steps, I see the message saying Endnote has updated successfully. But when I reopen Endnote, it’s as though the update never happened and it says I’m still running X8.0.0.12000. 

Any suggestions? 

Thanks :slight_smile:

Hello everyone,

I’m having the freeze issue, too. It’s gotten much worse than it used to be two or three days ago. Now I’ve reinstalled Endnote x8 (latest version, I’m also running the latest Mac OS version) and it’s all the same, except that I’m back to the 30 day trial version now because I’m on a stay abroad and can’t access my product key… This is the ultimate frustration, and it’s simply beyond me how the producer can be waiting for half a year for Apple to fix some piece of software when it’s their own customers who can’t manage their pdf files any more with Endnote. If Apple doesn’t get it fixed (assuming that is the cause, of which I’m really unconvinced), well, you’ve had months and months to think about alternative solutions. In the meantime, I can only caution anyone in my academic surroundings not to get involved with Endnote.

Best regards,

Jens Gillessen

Hi everyone, 

In addition to constant hanging/crashing, and not being able to update to X8.0.1.12626, I now have a NEW problem! I am no longer able to edit the reference output styles. Any changes I make are unable to be saved, and I get a notification saying that the output reference file doesn’t exist (screenshot attached). I’m currently getting this error message with all output styles that I try to edit and save. 

I have no idea why EndNote thinks the files don’t exist -  I can clearly see all of the files in the Styles folder (within Applications/ Endnote X8/ Styles). My EndNote library is saved to a folder on my desktop (not a cloud) and I’m currently running Sierra 10.12.5. Furthermore, another researcher in my lab is experiencing exactly the same issue.

Does anyone have any suggestions??

I’m flummoxed that we are STILL experiencing constant issues with Endnote. With the constant hanging, Endnote X8 has been pretty much useless for the last 3 months, but now not being able to edit output styles has rendered this software a complete waste of time. As someone who has used Endnote since 2014, I am furious that nothing has been done to resolve these issues. The poor response from Clarivate is mind-boggling! 


Hi everyone, 

In addition to constant hanging/crashing, and not being able to update to X8.0.1.12626, I have a NEW delightful problem!

I am no longer able to edit the reference output styles. Any changes I make are unable to be saved, and I get a notification saying that the output reference file doesn’t exist (screenshot attached). I’m currently getting this error message with all output styles that I try to edit and save. 

I have no idea why Endnote thinks the files don’t exist -  I can clearly see all of the files in the Styles folder within applications. My Endnote library is saved to a folder on my desktop (not a cloud) and I’m currently running Sierra 10.12.5.

Furthermore, another researcher in my lab is experiencing exactly the same issue.

Does anyone have any suggestions??

I’m flummoxed that we are STILL experiencing constant issues with Endnote. With the constant hanging, Endnote X8 has no been pretty much useless for the last 3 months, but now not being able to edit output styles has rendered this software a complete waste of time. As someone who has used Endnote since 2014, I am furious that nothing has been done to resolve these issues. The poor response from Clarivate is mind-boggling! 

This problem of Endnote freezing persists with X8.0.1 and macOS 10.12.6.

There are strong indications that the PDF previewing is the culprit, regardless if the PDF file has lots of annotations or not. 

I have for now switched my my view in local library mode to not show any PDF page, meaning these are the settings “bottom preview”, “right preview”, and “references only”.

So far this has increased stability, but I cannot say for sure that this is a fully functional workaround against freezing. There will be moments also when we need to verify any new attachments to be correct :-/

I open PDFs via the keyboard shortcut opt-cmd-P that launches the configured external PDF viewing app.

I am not surprised that Apple (on their high horse) is not giving high priority to fixing the PDFkit framework. See also:

https://tidbits.com/article/17152

I am using EndNote (8.0.1) on my Macbook Pro (Sierra 10.12.6), and it crashes frequently.  I am also using OneDrive, which may be related to this issue.

Deranged_Chef

Thanks for tip. I’ll try this to see if there is any stability 

Thanks for tip. I’ll try this to see if there is any stability 

AmandaNorton. Fortunately I didn’t come across this issues. Hopefully community here would help you with this issue. 

kk_hawaii, unfortunately, this didn’t solve issue on my end. :frowning: