EndNote X8 Keeps Crashing on Mac

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.

After upgrading my MAC os to High Sierra 10.13.2 I find out that Endnote X7 is not compatible and just would not open, so I have just paid for the upgrade to X8 to find that this crashes instantly with any attempt to interact with it.  This really is not fair, although I have submitted my PhD thesis I have my viva next week, so desperately need to be looking at my stored references. I also need to be subitting manuscripts and rely on Endnote for that.

I’ve tried the upgrade fix, no joy.  I’ve tried syncing with a cloud version but they do not match and contain fewer references.

Please tell me there is a solution, otherwise I will attempt to take my 2000 references and switch to another referencing manager!!

Are people still having this problem??

I am running OS 10.13.3 but have older versions of OS 10 running on my other computers (and the same thing happens).  Endnote continuously crashes and I am unable to add references to a group or even a PDF to some of my references. I have rebuilt my database and am running it off my desktop.  The program crashes even without a database loaded so this is not a database issue.  

I just downloaded the trial version of the lastest version of the shiny Endnote 8 on my MBP, running High Sierra 10.13.3.

I’m experiencing the crash on startup that everyone is talking about. I have only inputted 5 references so far.

I like what Endnote is supposed to do, but this type of unreliability with something so important (my daily research and writing) for a whopping $250 USD… is something that is giving me second thoughts.

Can anyone give any advice? Is there a solution or something better? 

It’s so frustrating when a brand new product struggles with such basic issues (it won’t start!). 

I just downloaded the trial version of the lastest version of the shiny Endnote 8 on my MBP, running High Sierra 10.13.3.

I’m experiencing the crash on startup that everyone is talking about. I have only inputted 5 references so far.

I like what Endnote is supposed to do, but this type of unreliability with something so important (my daily research and writing) for a whopping $250 USD… is something that is giving me second thoughts.

Can anyone give any advice? Is there a solution or something better? 

It’s so frustrating when a brand new product struggles with such basic issues (it won’t start!). 

Hi everyone,

I was experiencing the same thing. I’m on a Mac and was using the latest versions. I’m in the last six weeks of my PhD thesis (I have about 2000 footnotes) and was about to have a nervous breakdown because of the issues I was having with Endnote 8. I tried everything suggested here and am a long time Endnote user - and it’s been a rocky relationship.

So… I went back and installed Endnote 7, uninstalled Word 2016 16, installed Word 2016 15.39, and now life isn’t as terrifying as it was. So far, so good!

I would strongly suggest you do this while they fix Endnote 8 (if they ever do).

Good luck!

I am desperately trying to complete my PhD dissertation at Virginia Tech.  I upgraded my MacBook Air to High Sierra and EndNote X8 recently and I wish that I hadn’t.  X8 seems to continually crash on my system.  I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling EndNote, in addition to Office 2016, but nothing helps.  I am at a sufficicient stage of despiration to be willing to downgrade my system back to Sierra / EndNote X7, however I need an install code for my institution’s (Virginia Tec) EndNote X7 license.  Who do I contact and how do I get this code?

X8.2 on macOS is so slow and so unstable as to be useless. I’ve opened tickets/cases with support only to have them deflect blame to Apple. Yes, PDFkit has issues but not issues that would cause these problems. I’m left to conclude that EndNote is not suitable for it’s intended purpose and will have to move on to another product (Mendeley or Zotero). It’s really pathetic.

After having the exact same issue on both Endnote 7 and updated 8.2 constantly crashing on my MacBook Pro (OS Sierra 10.12.6) and being completely unworkable as I’m writing my thesis, I have discovered the following:

    • Issues arose after MPB operating system El Capitan 10.11 (I.e., if your OS is this or earlier, you should be fine) due to Apple changing their PDFkit.
    • In my Endnote Library, this has resulted in some of my pdfs being duplicated in the “PDF” folder in the .Data file of my Library. (I.e., more than one of the sub folders contained the same pdf for a given reference in my Endnote Library). 
    • If you only use Endnote as a citation manager and not as a reference manager, then you can just move the “PDF” folder from the .Data folder to somewhere else. This will stabalize Endnote, but you will have to access all your pdfs manually by searching for them in the moved “PDF” folder.

Here is the fix I did (564 references, with 311 pdfs):

  1. SAVE A COPY OF YOUR LIBRARY!!! (put the backup in a safe place). It is easy to screw up how your library talks to the attached pdfs, so make sure you have an original untouched backup somewhere.
  2. Close Endnote if you have it open
  3. Open the .Data folder of your library, make a copy of the “PDF” folder to a temporary different location, like your desktop.
  4. Now create a new empty folder and name it “PDF_temporary_fixing” on your desktop. 
  5. You now have two folders on your desktop, the copied “PDF” folder, and the “PDF_temporary_fixing”
  6. In this copied “PDF” folder that you have moved to your desktop, move all of the pdfs out of their sub folders and into the “PDF_temporary_fixing”. There are shortcuts that you can google on how to do this quickly instead of moving one-by-one if you have a ton of pdfs.
  7. Now you should have just a list of pdf files on your “PDF_temporary_fixing” folder. By doing this, you will be able to identify  any duplicates of pdfs because they will have the same name (write these down). You would have a much harder time doing this if you have to go through the sub folders one-by-one.
  8. You can now delete the copied PDF folder, as you have now identified your duplicates.
  9. Go back into your .Data folder of your Library, and into your “PDF” folder that you have there, and search within that “PDF” folder for the identified pdf duplicates. Write down the folder number that the duplicates (both/all copies) are in. For example: for pdf “Smith-2016.pdf” you could have one duplicate in folder “3907727203” and another in folder “2442186214”. It is also worth it to look at each pdf in adobe to see if one has any highlights/comments that you may have made, so you know which one to keep. I also made note of which file was older/bigger to help me decide which one I would keep.
  10. By this step you should have a list of all your duplicates, their folders, and an idea of which ones you would like to keep.
  11. Now you get to go into the “PDF” folder in the .Data folder and delete the folders with duplicates!
  12. You’re not quite done yet, you now have to open Endnote and make sure that the references which had multiple .pdfs are still talking to the remaining .pdf in the “PDF” folder in the .Data folder. Search for each reference and click on it to see if it still opens the reference. If they all do, great! You’re done and can also delete your “PDF_temporary_fixing” folder. If not, then keep going.
  13. For any references that aren’t opening their pdfs, you have to re-attach them manually.
  14. Close Endnote
  15. Go into the “PDF” folder in the .Data folder, and move  the folders with the references you want to attach completely out of the “PDF” folder and onto your desktop.
  16. Open Endnote, and search for each reference that you need to re-attach. Drag their associated pdf onto the reference in Endnote to attach manually. Do this for each reference.
  17. You can now delete the moved folders on your desktop, as Endnote automatically creates a new copy in the “PDF” folder.

By doing the above my Endnote significantly stabilized. I found 6 duplicated references out of 311, so hopefully this is more of a sporadic occurence. I also would recommend manually attaching pdfs to imported references instead of getting Endnote to find and attach the pdfs for you. Don’t forget to create back-ups of your library regularly if something goes wrong.

I hope this works for other people! It’s labour-intensive but salvaged my thesis, library, and prevented me from having to run Endnote in Bootcamp or Parallels Desktop.

**UPDATE #1** after one week of regular daily use, the software remains stabilized. I am curious if others have tried and had any sucess using my posted fix?

**UPDATE #2** stburrow highlights an aspect of this problem that I haven’t encountered, being the use of Smart Groups, because I have not used them in my libraries. Therefore it appears that my fix will not work if the library utilizes Smart Groups.

hope someone can help it too

I am having the same exact problems. I am so frustrated. Has anyone figured out how to fix endnote so we can actually use it on our Macpro laptops? Thanks

I have been monitoring this thread since my posting three weeks ago.  I decided to try a few fixes, all without success.  Owing to my present status (writing dissertation, full-time) I don’t have the luxury of waiting for Clarivate to fix EN 8.2.  I have exported my EN library to SonnySoftware’s Bookends program.  Maybe some of this troubleshooting will help somebody else figure something out for Endnote, but I doubt it:

Following up on the suggestions by K-Jacob that duplicate pdf’s in the EN library tend to destabilize the program, I removed about 215 duplicates from my 6000+ record EN library.  When I tried to use some functionality in EN that used to work (smart groups) the program crashed multiple times.  Not a confidence builder for EN 8.2.

Next I tried using the EN ‘Recover Library…’ function in the ‘Tools’ menu.  After I entered the name of the recovered library, EN began indexing the pdf files in the recovered library.  Usually after getting through indexing about 15 pdf files the program crashed.  Later I deleted all the pdf files from the library copy that I was trying to recover, and the ‘Recover Library…’ function was able to complete whatever it does to fix a corrupted EN library.  Clearly the program was having some problems with some of my pdf files, but when I tried using the smart groups function within my recovered library, sans pdf files, the EN 8.2 program still crashed.

I think that there are multiple bugs contributing to the instability of EndNote 8.2 on the Mac.  As prior posters have noted (and I also was told by Clarivate support) Clarivate blames Apple for changes it made to the OS X pdf tool kit since the El Capitan release.  Perhaps that is true to some extent, but to my thinking it is the software vendor’s responsibility to adjust to changes in the operating systems that it sells products for.  El Capitan has been out for over two years, which seems to me plenty of time to develop and issue an update to EndNote that addresses whatever changes in Sierra and High Hierra occured.  When I contacted Clarivate about my problems with EndNote X8.2 three weeks ago, they advised me to reinstall everything on my computer under El Capitan and complain to Apple for them to fix OS X.  That suggestion is patently absurd.  I am not going to break my computer’s ability to interact with my other Apple devices (iPad, iPhone, etc.) because Clarivate is trying to shame Apple into changing their operating system.  I expect Apple doesn’t care a toss over how well one program (EndNote) functions on their products.  I could be wrong about Clarivate and/or Apple, and maybe patches are just about to be released.  Unfortunately I have work to get finished over the next thirty days, and I am not going to gamble on loading up my dissertation with EndNote citation codes if I can’t trust EndNote to run without crashing.  I don’t need the headache of watching EndNote freeze/crash while trying to finish my final dissertation copy.  All of this situation is a shame.  EndNote wasn’t the fanciest software for managing research literature, but I had developed a lot of workarounds for functionalities that were missing or that I had issues with.  Now I am going to have to start over with Bookends, which in itself is a headache but in the long run it is a headache I can deal with.  People and institutions depend on programs like EndNote.  I don’t appreciate getting caught in the middle of a staring match between Apple and Clarivate, waiting to see who blinks first.

Bien évidemment, je rencontre le même problème

La qualité n’est pas le fort de Thomson Reuters

Je déconseille fortement ce logiciel et encourage tout un chacun à utiliser Zotero

I’ve also found that Endnote crashes whenever I try to create a smart group.

Obviously, this isn’t a new problem.

Neither would it logically have anything to do with MacOS or pdfs. Clearly, the Endnote program has a serious bug.

Time to lift your game Clarivate!

Just adding to the chorus. Endnote seems unusuable on 10.13.3, incredibly slow, now crashing endlessly. Can only imagine if I were trying to do a dissertation with this, I’d defenstrate either myself or the computer. 

Really wanted that Word integration…

So. Here I am struggling with the same problems… Do you guys have feedback on Zotero? EndNote is simply unusable… 

Thanks

EDIT: how long do you think it will take before they fix all of this?

Last Fall I decided to take the plunge and buy a big-screen iPad Pro with iPencil for reading and annotating papers.  Although I was in the throes of writing my dissertation (I still am), I anticipated starting a new project in another academic department at my university, with a new stream of literature to read.  I was somewhat relieved to see that Clarivate (Formerly Thomson Reuters) had quietly removed some of the more objectionable barriers of their iPad EndNote application and that I could finally get some use from it on the iPad.  Later, when I took up my dissertation writing again in early January, I learned of the ‘problems’ with EndNote X8 after I updated my computers to OS X 10.13 High Sierra over the holidays.  Before that OS X update everything worked OK for me with EndNote.  The OS X upgrade necessitated a Microsoft Office 2016 update and following that update everything concerning EndNote unraveled for me.

Usually when a piece of software becomes unreliable on the Mac I assume that it is something that I am doing wrong, but I soon found out that EndNote X8 was an exception.  After failing in my attempt to reverse my upgrade of EndNote X8 back to X7 (my university would not give me a new install code to downgrade EndNote), I tried calling Clarivate to work with them, but the attitude that I got was that EndNote X8’s instability is the fault of Apple and Clarivate is blameless.  Clarivate support’s advice was for me to complain to Apple that they need to fix their OS X pdf kit and downgrade my computer to OS X El Capitan until Apple fixes High Sierra.  Working a new full-time research job, commuting 90 miles per day, and trying to finish a PhD dissertation made that suggestion impractical for me.  Even if I had the time, I wasn’t about to roll back my computer to an old OS because Clarivate either will not or cannot fix their program.

Earlier I looked at Zotero and Mendeley when I got my new iPad Pro.  Both programs’ reliance upon a paid subscription to a web server for file synchronization between the Mac and iPad was off-putting to me.  I had been through that sort of setup previously with Sente and I didn’t like it.  In my opinion, it should be possible to sychronize a Macintosh to an iPad through local wireless without having to buy a subscription (Mekentosj Papers 2 could do it).  Also, it was my impression that Zotero wasn’t especially well-suited to science-related work (I am in chemistry) but rather it is more humanities-focused.  However, that may just be bias on my part.  I really didn’t do much with Mendeley since it appeared to me to just be more of the same (similar to Zotero).

I really wanted to like EndNote Mac because my institution (Virginia Tech) licenses it for all of us and it has been a de-facto standard in the academic community for ages.  However, the EndNote Mac program changes at a glacial pace and as recent experiences prove, not always for the better.  If their telephone support response to me that Apple will have to change OS X is representative of the Clarivate’s position, then EndNote X8 Mac may not get ‘fixed’ until the next version of OS X gets released next Fall.  I base this guess on the assumption that, by then, even Clarivate will get the message then that Apple is not going to rewrite their pdf kit just to accomodate one recalcitrant software developer.  Unfortunately I cannot wait that long.  I have to write now.

I would strongly recommend that you try BookEnds as an alternative to EndNote X8.  It is a paid-app but it works very similarly to EndNote (that is, when EndNote used to work reliably).  I occasionally fire up EndNote X8 on my computer to see if there is a ‘patch’ update and I occasionally check responses to my postings here, but there is nothing.  I have found it necessary to move on/

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That worked for me, too, thank you soooooo much! (What worked is the suggestion to copy the whole document and paste it into a fresh new document)