Endnote MAC, problems with PDF Viewer

Hi I am having the same problem with endnote on mac. What works for me is while viewing the pdf on the right and the citations on the right if you click the last page of the pdf, in the area where you see all the pdf pages, then click the first page it will stay on the first page. Hope this also works for you. 

I’m done. I have better things to do than try to deal with many painful longstanding bugs in overpriced and undersupported software. Been an EndNote user and former beta tester for years but it’s changed hands many times and now is in the hands of folks who just don’t seem to care or know how to code. X9 has the same bugs (slowdowns, poor scrolling, PDF issues galore) that x8 has. And x9 remains a 32-bit app. Updates are infrequent and generally late with regard to Word and OS updates that render EN unusable. I tried Bookends from Sonnysoftware.com and it seems amazing. None of the PDF issues, a very responsive developer and it seems to be able to do even more than EN. So buh-bye. EndNote has lost me as a loyal customer and I’m just sorry I didn’t learn about Bookends 2-3 years ago.

I just purchased endnote x9. I am a new user and I encountered this issue immediately after attempting to use the software. What are my options?

Personally, I would investigate a refund asap. I did a lot of research looking at alternatives and for my uses, Bookends works exceptionally well so far. The fact that X9 didn’t fix a single bug from X8 and to add insult to injury, isn’t even 32-bit, made my decision to ditch Endnote after nearly two decades of use, an easy one even though it’s a big shame. Given how long it took them to update Endnote for Word 2016 compatibiity (nearly a year after the betas of Word launched publicly), I’m skeptical they’ll have a 64-bit compiled version ready for when Apple pulls the plug on allowing any 32-bt app to run. 

So I’d try to get a refund for sure. Good luck.

Same problem here, on Mac OS X 10.13.6. Even after several months of complaints from so many users why Endnote will not address the issue is beyond me. What is the incentive here to upgrade again when the experience shows that Endnote does not care to address the problems promptly. Well…I need to find alternatives.

Yup. I did a ton of research regarding alternatives and was reluctant to change, but Bookends, for what it’s worth, has fit the bill nicely, with the same features present in Endnote and a few that Endnote doesn’t have that really are helpful.

I’m on 10.13.6, and EndNote X8.2

What worked for me: change the layout to “bottom-PDF”. Click the button “open PDF”. 

The layout appears to be important - showing the PDF on the right and opening it showed the bug. Also, double-clicking the reference shows the bug.

Fingers crossed.

Steve

Steve,

You are brilliant! Thanks for sharing your solution.

I am running Mac version 10.13.6 and using EndNote X9 and the solution works for that version too. I actually changed mine to Layout - “bottom - split” and it also works with that layout .

FINGERS - ARE - CROSSED!

Thanks,

Rick

@bpg10000 wrote:

… What is the incentive here to upgrade again when the experience shows that Endnote does not care to address the problems promptly …

The problem STILL exists in X9 - software that was released after 10.13.4! I asked for my money back and got short shrift - as a user since the early 90s this application has had £1000s from me and organisations I work for. I suspect that moving forward our students will be moved to another program.

Steve, your solution worked for me too, and I think I narrowed the problem down further. It’s not whether the PDF pane is on the bottom or on the right that’s the problem, but how many pages it’s displaying. If you keep it on the bottom and zoom out far enough so that you can see 3 pages, the problem comes back. Conversely, if you put it on the right and zoom in so that you just have one page, the problem disappears.

The problem seems to be that the PDF viewer shows whatever page is in the middle of the PDF pane. So if you have several pages showing in the PDF pane and try to scroll slowly in the PDF viewer, you’ll be switched back to whatever is the central page in the PDF pane. If you scroll quickly enough, the PDF pane’s position might change as well, though not necessarily by one page. Whatever page is the center page is what the PDF viewer will end up showing. You can scroll the PDF viewer smoothly without skipping pages by scrolling in the PDF pane instead, though if you’re zoomed out too far you’ll only be able to show pages that reach the middle of the PDF pane, thus rendering the start and end of a PDF unreachable without zooming in the PDF pane. Interestingly, setting the layout to not show the PDF pane doesn’t help, unless you set the zoom level so that only one page is shown before you hide it. However, the zoom level is reset whenever you click a new reference, even if the PDF pane is hidden, so the only way to get this to stick that I can think of at the moment is to show the PDF pane at the bottom where it will automatically choose a zoom level that doesn’t show several pages. Then you can choose whichever view mode you want, including showing the preview pane on the right, as long as you don’t show the PDF pane on the right, which will cause the problem to come back.

Another really weird thing to note is that if you open several different PDFs in the viewer at once and scroll in one of them, the others will change page as well, presumably because they’re all tied to the PDF pane, even though it’s not showing the file. This is of course utterly stupid.

The simplest solution to this bug seems pretty clear to me: don’t tie the page being shown in the PDF viewer to what page is being shown in the PDF pane at all. I can’t think of any reason why I’d want the PDF preview to scroll along as I’m using the PDF viewer in the first place, especially not with the scrolling affecting all open PDFs. I’m going to try to contact customer service and provide them with this information, so that they can hopefully fix the stupid bug. However, the fact that this embarrassing problem hasn’t been fixed for months makes me less than optimistic about a bug fix coming anytime soon.

Mabo, I think you cracked it! 

I just today got EndNote set up on my new research laptop and of course hit this bug as soon as I imported my supervisors library. 

Thank´s a million for sharing your solusion Steve - works for me aswell.

And with Mabo’s explanation it is easy to “adjust” the viewer if I happen to use a layout that makes the bug come back.

Considering the long story behind this, I’m interested in maybe looking at optional citation managers (before building up my own library, now that I have a chance starting from scratch)…

Does anyone else who has good recommendations on alternatives?

@thewitt

Update - check the last entries in this thread - there is a workaround and one user actually figured out the potential source of the bug too.

Solusion in short: Change the layout to Bottom - Preview or Bottom Spit (so that only one page a time is in the Pdf-pane). Then the PDF viewer works fine. 

(however if you zoom out the pdfpane then the PDF-viewer window will always skip to the page centered in the pane - that is the bug).

I changed to Bookends after a lot of research. Does what endnote does but reliably and for half the price, plus a responsive developer and some additional features that are making it a pleasure to use. 

@cajaan - I rather like Mendeley, which is what I was using before switching over to EndNote a little while ago. The only reason I switched is because most researchers at my university use EndNote, and it’s much easier to collaborate on articles using the same citation manager. Mendeley doesn’t have any obvious bugs that I know of (very much unlike EndNote), it’s free as long as you don’t need too much online storage, and it plays nice with LaTeX (also unlike EndNote). 

Yup, same problem here. Mac user, just upgraded to Mojave and Endnote x9. PLEASE, get this problem sorted ASAP. Most people (including myself) review the abstract of an article as a way of indexing the article. With the current PDF viewer behavior, this is not possible. 

Daniel Pacheco

Same here.

I was using Endnote x7, suffereing from this bug

2 years later, Endnote X9 has the exact same bug. The included pdf reader is useless.

I am not sure what has been done between X7 and X9 actually (well, it is slower actually…)

Also experiencing this issue. Pretty terrible- please advise 

I have the same issue.

Mac OSX Sierra 10.13.6

Endnote X9

It randomly jumps to different pages in the document. Does not allow me to view certain pages. 

Endnote user on mac since 2015. This is still a problem in 2019 with X9 on a Mac. What the bleep are you guys doing to fix this?

Endnote user on mac since 2015. This is still a problem in 2019 with X9 on a Mac. What the bleep are you guys doing to fix this?