EndNote X9.3.1 running very slow on macOS Catalina

EndNote has been irritatingly slow on all MacOS versions for me since X7 was released. I also have colleagues experiencing this issue. It has been immensely frustrating, especially of late where the application is almost useless. I can only use the application for inserting citations into Word.

Critical functions that are unusable for me due to the long time it takes to perform related tasks:

Adding a reference

Updating a reference

Moving from one reference to an other reference using the mouse or cursor keys

Attaching PDF file

Saving PDF file after making annotations

I have tried several recommendations here with little improvement:

Updated to EndNote X9 - No change

Reduced library clone to 14 references - No change

Updated to the latest Java - I can now quickly update a reference without waiting or seeing the beach ball/spinning wheel.

Reduced output styles and connections to one each - No change

Moving library from iCloud folders and preventing iCloud syncs for the folder - No change

Java 8 Update 231

Endnote 9.3.2 (bld 15235) with about 14 references

Mac OS 10.15.1

Macbook Air Early 2013

System runs latest Final Cut Pro, Illustrator, Photoshop, SPSS, MAXQDA…perfectly.

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Maybe this helps someone

I run EndNote X9.3.2 on macOS Catalina 10.15.1 with both Microsoft Word (16.30) and Apple Pages (8.2.1).

With MS Word I experience the same issues as described below.

With Apple Pages — however — EndNote is extremely fast and reliable.
A conclusion might be: it is more a MS Word—EndNote than a macOS—EndNote problem.

In my experience, Endnote on MacOS has been slow for the last 3 versions. EN is not slow when interfacing with Word, reference inserts and bibliography updates are as fast as they used to be.

The problem lies with the EN software itself. The following is very reproducible: select any article within any list in your library. Hit the down arrow to move to the next article and continue doing that. After about 10 selections, you start to see a very noticeable delay between the keyboard arrow and the list selection. Opening a reference then takes several seconds. It’s all downhill from there. In the end, it becomes totally unworkable.

This happens with any EN database: large or small, pdfs, no pdfs, Word active, Word not active, it doesn’t matter. You can easily reproduce it even on the tiny example datasets they include with the software.

I suspect this behavior is probably due to a memory leak that Clarivate is unable or unwilling to fix. 

When you contact Support, they always try to pin the blame on the user: is your library on a shared drive/network/cloud? (No, it isn’t). Is your database large? (Well, about 4000 records, but it occurs even in small libraries with less than 100 records). Do you have a lot of pdfs in the library? (No, not a single one). At that point, they stop responding and drop your case.

Apart from the fact that EN still looks the same (and does the same) as they version I started to work with in 2008, they always force you through (paying) upgrades whenever MacOS makes a meaningful version upgrade. So you pay and get nothing new in return.

Maddening! So frustrated with this! Unfortunately there are few alternatives out there…

I’ve been having the same issue on 9.3.2 on Catalina. Frustratingly slow.

However, for what it’s worth, I just disabled EndNote online sync (under preferences), restarted EndNote, and things are moving much much faster.  Hoping it stays this way!

Well, it appears to run very smoothly for a few minutes, but then I begin to get the spinning beach ball.  Only shutting down and reopening EndNote appears to fix this, but I have to do it every 10 minutes or so.

Yes, this is exactly the problem that I have.

Come on Clarivate. Time to fix this thing.

My experience too. I haven’t found a solution that holds up longer than a short session, then quitting Endnote, and restarting it: repeat. I wondered if it was my machine, but it is fully loaded (MacBook Pro 2016, 16 GB RAM, 1TB storage). 

The problem is with EndNote, as others are attesting.

PS: Don’t follow the advice of their help staff, who will make you run through endless hoops that do not avail, like relocating your library, rebuilding it, etc.

Ok…I’m at my whits end.  Been workign on my dissertation again for the past week after taking a medical break.  I don’t know what happened to Endnote in the time I was gone, but I’m about ready to throw my computer out the window.  Literally every 5 minutes while I’m typing in Word I get the beachball.  Anything I do in Endnote itself is beachball beach ball beachball.  Add a reference beachball.  Open the reference, beachball.  Add the PDF, beachball.  I swear I’ve lost at least an hour if not more of work this past week just staring at a beachball because of Endnote.  I know it’s not my machine.  What can I do to get this working or is it really time to invest in changing away?  

I’m on

macOS 10.15.2  

MacBook Pro 2017; 2.8 GHz Core i7; 16 GB Ram  

Endnote X9.3.2

Word 16.32

I’m guessing no one else is having that many issues on catalina?

I had the same problem of sluggish running of EndNote X9. I’ve clean installed X9 and updated later; but I had the problem as all in this post have experienced.

Now, I’ve resolved the problem by just clean installing EndNote X9.3.2 (latest version) at once (meaning, without updates) today, Feb. 5, 2020. All the Preferences, Connections, Styles, and Filters etc. stay as the default. Probably, the latest version may be OK with Catalina. My Mac specs are

macOS Catalina Version 10.15.3

MacBook Pro Processor 2.2 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i7

EndNote X9.3.2 Bld 15235 (University Subscription)

Hope you all resolve the problems!^^

I had the same problem of sluggish running of EndNote X9. I’ve clean installed X9 and updated later; but I had the problem as all in this post have experienced.

Now, I’ve resolved the problem by just clean installing EndNote X9.3.2 (latest version) at once (meaning, without updates) today, Feb. 5, 2020. All the Preferences, Connections, Styles, and Filters etc. stay as the default. Probably, the latest version may be OK with Catalina. My Mac specs are

macOS Catalina Version 10.15.3

MacBook Pro Processor 2.2 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i7

EndNote X9.3.2 Bld 15235 (University Subscription)

Hope you all resolve the problems!^^

I’ve been using Endnote for almost 25 years, and formatted up to 700 pages with thousands of references in one session. With Catalina I have encountered som kind of bug. Endnote works very slowly, even when only handling references without PDFs. When trying to update bibliography it goes extremely slowly, and with some more pages it simple tells me it times out. 
I have EN X9.3.2 and Word for Mac 16.34 on a MacBook Air 2019 with 16 GB ram. 

I have also been having this issue. Endnote X9.3.2, new MacBook pro with Catalina 10.15.3, and Word 16.34. EndNote peformance quickly degrades until it is unusable. I contacted technical support late last year about this and they said they were looking at the issue. I have emailed them 3 times this year for an update and they won’t respond to my emails. Really poor customer service by this company.

New user here,

Just paid a fortune for this software so I could export from Ovid (C/W papers)

This is just awful-Using latest version albeit with High Sierra and slow as a wet week. Occasional crashes but beachballs everywhere.

Might just have to move library to Papers.

call their tech support to see if they can isolate the problem.  

This will likely finally get me banned from here as the moderators have threatened, but I ditched EN over a year ago for Bookends and am so sorry I hadn’t done so earlier. I was plagued for 2-3 years with horribly slow performance from EndNote, regardless of the macOS version, and tech support either responded with “fixes” that were not at all useful, or even absurd ones that were so obviously not going to help (remove all PDFs-problem solved! Not). Even tried their suggestion to remove my Endnote library and files from Dropbox-that didn’t help at all.

Bookends isn’t perfect, but it was easy to migrate, the developer regularly updates it, tech support results in a prompt personal email suggestion that is always informed and usally helpful, and there are some additional features not present in EndNote. When EN 9 came out and it was clearly no better than EN 8, and had no compelling new features, I knew it was time to leave. There are other alternatives besides Bookends (which is Mac-only), including Zotero and a few others mentioned by folks in this forum over the years. Pick one that seems like it fits your needs and try out a demo, which is how I got started with Bookends. But EndNote has been tone deaf for years regarding us Mac users and shows no interest in maintaining the software for us in any reasonable shape. Good luck.

I just got EndNote from my Uni and installed it on my Mac and cannot belive how many beachballs come up with a brand new library of under 100 references (Note: most of mine do have PDFs).

I don’t have Java installed in the first place so I don’t think installing it would be helpful. Does EndNote require Java?

My compuer

EndNote X 9.3.2

MacOS Catalina 10.15.4

MacBook Pro

3.3 GHz 

16 GB ram

500GB HD (75GB free)

My endnote X9.3.1 is *also* running very slow on macOS Catalina… I only upgraded to Catalina/X9.3.1 recently and imagine my frustration when I found out that a good portion of my attachments/references were corrupted during library conversion. Now that I’m trying to fix all of that, it’s been an absurdly long process because it takes the software so long to open/move references around.

I’m having the same problem.

It seems that no solution has been provided by Clarivates for this old and very relevant problem. 

I’m working with:

EndNote X9.3.3 (institucional license)

Macbook pro 2020

2.3 GHz i7-4

macOS Catalina 10.15.6

recommend you reach out to endnote.com/support