EndNote X8 Keeps Crashing on Mac

Same problem as everyone else on two mac’s   Endnote 8.01  and OS 10.12.6 

Rebuild, reinstalled   no effect …    frequent  forced quits     my DB has 21,000 refs and about 10,000 PDFs

Based on ahbell’s  suggestion,  i made a new directory outside of  DOCUMENTS …  HD/USER/TCOATES/ENDNOTE_DB

Put the database there  and things seemed to be fine …  for a few hours …  then, my computer asked me to update my ONEDRIVE softwre  and i did this … and immediatley,  EN became unstable and produced the beachball.  

So,  i stopped ONEDRIVE completely…     and blocked it from loading on login.   figured i could turn it back on when i want to use or sync it.

I have been running on two different machines with no difficulty for 48 hours now .   I will post another update in a few days one way or the other.

I do not use ONEDRIVE  (prefer DROPBOX) …  so i realize this is not a great solution.  However,  it probably localizes the problem to an interaction between ONEDRIVE and EN.     and may help get some thesis writers on track.

As an aside.  I see tremendous frustration on the posts here. I understand.  I am totally dependant on EN and have been using it for at least 10 to 15 years … switched from refmanager in the 90’s i think. (same company, switched becasue everuyone else was using EN)   I have been struck by the excellence of the support by EN.  They have helped me quickly and effectivley every time i have called them over the years.   I could not do my DB rebuild a couple of weeks ago and they offerend to do it for me , for example.  and kept following up til the rebuild problme was resolved…   I am sure they are not perfect,  butl, in my opinion, they have the best support of any software company i know.   I am guessing they are very upset and frustrated by this as well.      

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.

Company was bought 2015/2016 in a multi billion transaction and the products ,tech and customer service never worked. Got myself reimbursed apr 2017 and happy with x7. No hope. Calls get rerouted via India and places where staffers never heard of references.

Sorry to hear you have had this experience with their support.   As i noted above,  this has not been my experience at all … I can get though to them very quickly and they are very helpful 95% of the time over many years.   Not perfect, perhaps, but quite striklingly better than most,  including several contacts after the buyout you mention.

Regarding the BeachBALL  and crashing,    as of today,  9/14/2017 at 6:50 PM PST  i have been Using EN 8.01 on my mac with NO MORE BEACHBALLS.  with frequent use over the 4 days,  under the conditions noted in my previsou post.

I have not installed the latest update that just came out this week…  yet … 

TDC

I am having this problem as well. I tried moving my library out of my desktop folder, as a previous user had mentioned the desktop/documents automatically synch to icloud. I moved my library into my home folder and it is still crashing constantly, sometimes everytime I try to save a paper.

have you tried to recover damaged library?  It may have been damaged by the time you moved it from the iCloud location?  How did you move it?  

I had the same thing …  by the way,  i repaired the database a few times to no avail.   I moved the EN databases to the HOME DIR … as suggested by someone else.   still the beachball.

But,  when i turned off ONEDRIVE … all the prolmes stopped … see my previsou post last 9/14/2017.  

As of today … 9/20/2017 …   no crash,  no beachballs  … smooth sailing,  including with the 8.1 upgrade on my macBook and my MacPro …    Both machines were crashing all the the time with ONEDRIVE running … 

Good luck

Tom

Hi all,

I was experiencing significant crashing and sync issues with Endnote X8 today, and I managed to solve the crash and get back to work. 

I had noticed that my entire library had been duplicated 5 times. I have 1717 references stored, I opened EndNote to find that I had over 11,000 references today. What joy! Every time I opened the program my overall references would get shorter and shorter until the program ‘quit unexpectedly’. 

What DID NOT WORK:

Reinstalling EndNote X8

Updating EndNote X8 to X8.1

Coming to the support forums

What DID work:

  1. Disabled my Macbook Pro wireless internet connection, preventing EndNote from Syncing.

  2. Went through ALL of my references and deleting extraneous duplicates, 5 per reference. 

  3. Reenabled my wireless internet connection, allowing EndNote to sync with the online service.

  4. Once syncing was complete, exiting EndNote and restarting my Mac and the program to ensure the issue had been resolved. 

I think I lost a few references, however, I’d rather lose a few references than not be able to use the program. 

Best of luck. Hope this helps!

I have been having the same problem for months. I have a mac pro lap top and endnote X8.0.1. I have to force close repeatedly during the day. I love having the groups of studies but this is getting ridiculous…

It gives a bit relief to find so many Endnote users having the same problem I am having for months. It constantly freezes at start and have to force quite each time (MacOS Sierra). Had tried to rebuild my library twice now but the problem comes back after a while. I have more than 2,000 references in my library. I had doubted that maybe my library is just too large, but from this thread small libraries suffer just the same. Sometimes I become so frustrated that I start to search for alternative software to replace Endnote. It is supposed to improve your productivity and now it has beome a heavy drag. I contacted Tech Support before and they acted like they never knew this is a problem. 

Thanks for sharing!

I am having the same problem and it is so frustrating!!! I have downloaded Zotero now after many weeks of trouble with Endnote and think there is no other solution for me than to switch to this (or another) software. I would really appreciate if Endnote could solve the problem though!  But I am starting to lose my patience. 

They know about this because it reports to apple every time it crashes on my computer. I called EndNote and they told me that it is a problem with Apple handling the PDFs attached to the EndNote. Apple is to fix it but has not done so.

Go figure! acting more like Microsoft!

I called EndNote and they said apple knows about this and is working to fix. Slow slow slow-- reminds me of Microsoft.

Said it has to do with handing PDFs in EndNote

I am sorry to hear that? Where do you keep your library  comparebox.pk/Movies/Vidya-Balan-Arth-Movie-Trailer-And-Release-Date

I’m pretty sure that PDF is a red herring (has little or nothing to do with crash issues). Using word2011 instead of word2016 may be a work-around to avoid crashing. Details below.

I think the pdf problem is a seperate issue that has nothing to do with the crashes of word2016 (15.x) and/or Endnote 8.1.

Assuming the pdf issue has to do with “highlighting text is misaligned”, mentioned elsewhere. This is a known-issue that has been reported to Apple, and happens with other software besides Endnote.

Here is why I think the pdf issue is not related to the crashes or word2016 and/or endnote… Have mac osx 10.12.6 with all updates, and it has both word2016 (with all updates) and word2011 with all updates (= version 14.7.7 (170905) = the final update for office2011, since support ended Oct 10, 2017).

Word2016 crashing several times daily when using Endnote 8.1. But one same computer, Word2011 is working fine. If the pdf problem was causing the crashes, then why does word2011 seem to work fine on same mac where crashes happen with word2016? That’s why I think the PDF issue has nothing to do with most of the crashes reported on this forum that have been going on since at least May 2017.

Note: I don’t know if word2011 will work on osx-10.13 (high sierra): probably not. But if you have 10.12 or eariler, you can try word2011. If you do not have word2011, you can still download the installer and the culumulative updater for office2011 (you probably want to install *only* word, and not excel-2011, not power-point-2011, and certainly not outlook-2011 !).

Installer for Office2011 and culumulative updater is at the 2 links at macadmins.software site and the links are also 

in attached Word2011-as-workaround.txt file if they don’t come through below.

http://officecdn-microsoft-com.akamaized.net/PR/MacOffice2011/en-us/ MicrosoftOffice2011.dmg

https://support.microsoft.com/help/3212225

 I used to have a site-licened word2011, and when re-installing the installer found the old site license for it.)

I’m not sure if word2011 will work on high-sierra (10.13), but still seems to work fine with newest endnote 8.1  on 10.12 (sierra) and earlier 10.11. However, there will be no more security updates for office2011, so using word2011 should be seen as temporary workaround until the crashes with word2016/endnote8 seem solved. 

I would be interested in hearing if others have found that using word2011 lessens crashing or not. If it does, then we should try to submit detailed bug reports, including steps to reproduce the crash, crash reports. etc.

@sertoli wrote:

I called EndNote and they said apple knows about this and is working to fix. Slow slow slow-- reminds me of Microsoft.

Said it has to do with handing PDFs in EndNote

Sorry I don’t have any help regarding the crashing of Endnote itself.

But using word2011 instead of word2016 may be a work-around to avoid crashing of word. I don’t think using word2011 will help with the crashing of endnote8, but using word2011 instead of word2016 seems to reduce crashing of word (when using endnote cwyw). Details below.

The  pdf problem is a seperate issue that may contribute to crashing of endnote, but seems to have little if anything to do with the crashes of word2016 (15.x). That is, Assuming the pdf issue has to do with “highlighting text is misaligned”, mentioned elsewhere. Endnote folks say that this has been reported to Apple, and happens with other software besides Endnote.

Here is why I think the pdf issue is not related to the crashes or word2016. Have mac osx 10.12.6 with all updates, and it has both word2016 (with all updates) and word2011 with all updates (= version 14.7.7 (170905) = the final update for office2011, since support ended Oct 10, 2017).

Word2016 crashing several times daily when using Endnote 8.1. But one same computer, Word2011 is working fine. If the pdf problem was causing the crashes of word, then why does word2011 seem to work fine on same mac where crashes happen with word2016? That’s why I think the PDF issue has nothing to do any crashes of word reported on this forum. .

Note: I don’t know if word2011 will work on osx-10.13 (high sierra): probably not. But if you have 10.12 or eariler, you can try word2011. If you do not have word2011, you can still download the installer and the culumulative updater for office2011 (you probably want to install *only* word, and not excel-2011, not power-point-2011, and certainly not outlook-2011 !).

Installer and updater are 2 links at macadmins.software  and also in attached word2011-workaround.txt file

http://officecdn-microsoft-com.akamaized.net/PR/MacOffice2011/en-us/ MicrosoftOffice2011.dmg

https://support.microsoft.com/help/3212225

I’m not sure if word2011 will work on high-sierra (10.13), but still seems to work fine with newest endnote 8.1  on 10.12 (sierra) and earlier 10.11. However, there will be no more security updates for office2011, so using word2011 should be seen as temporary workaround until the crashes with word2016/endnote8 seem solved. 

I would be interested in hearing if others have found that using word2011 lessens crashing or not. If it does, then we should try to submit detailed bug reports to endote, including steps to reproduce the crash, crash reports. etc.

word2011-workaround.txt (2.66 KB)

I’m new to endnote as of today.  I’ve got a Mac with High Sierra and word 2011.  In my 1 days use I’ve not had any random crashing of either endnote or word (possibly because my library is very small). However, every time I try to make a smart group on end note it just shuts down.

I’ve had the exact same problem! Mac OS X High Sierra, Word 2016, just upgraded EndNote to X8 and every time I try to create a smart group it crashes (i.e. the application closes unexpectedly) immediately when I press the button ‘create’.

When I re-open EndNote, the smart group has not been created.

UPDATE: updating to EndNote X8.0.1 solved this issue. However I had to update following these instructions:

http://community.thomsonreuters.com/t5/EndNote-General/X8-on-Mac-keeps-prompting-for-update-even-after-update-has-quot/m-p/135600#M26781

That would be a crash… Since reverting to X7, designed by the previous Thomson Reuters team, 0 issues. Was reimbursed for X8. What a buggy product since Clarivate bought it all and “streamlined” personnel.