Hi Leanne,
We appreciate your concern. And we’re sorry for these current issues.
The Update from EndNote X9.2 to X9.3 is a manual process. While previous iterations of EndNote X9 (the X9.0s and X9.1s) are able to update automatically, EndNote X9.2 is not.
Additionally, the path in EndNote Preferences for automatically opened collections is not going to automatically change. Reconverting an EndNote library, and giving the new conversion exactly the same name as the Old conversion, and OK’ing the replacement of files would overwrite your library. However, you would be warned that you’re overwriting an existing file in the process, which should prevent most users from accidentally overwriting their converted library.
Opening a Converted library with an older version of the EndNote software previous to EndNote X9.3 is also quite hazardous to that collection as well. EndNote should issue the warning you indicated, about a missing .DATA folder, giving the user pause before potentially opening that library. Because of this we recommend removing previous versions of EndNote prior to installation of a new version.
It should be noted that Network, and Shared drives are not safe locations for EndNote library files. Being similar to Access files, this article does a good job of documenting why these aren’t healthy locations for database files…
https://codekabinett.com/rdumps.php?Lang=2&targetDoc=onedrive-dropbox-offline-folder-access-database
EndNote library files are meant to be used from a local drive. So, do be careful they aren’t being dynamically backed up while in use, as this could create serious library issues as well.
I also apologize for the current lack of clarity for the Synchronization process for EndNote X9.3.
The way this should work is that when you trigger synchronization with the newly converted EndNote X9.3 version of the library, the Synch process should prompt you to perform a Merge. The answer here should simply be to say “Yes” to the merge, which will then update the online collection to use the converted library.
The converted library will simply take over, as the Online Service is set to expect this to happen with the EndNote X9.3 update.
We are working on a Knowledge Base article to help clarify this behavior, and any users who experience any confusion about, or problems with the process are encouraged to reach out directly to our Technical Support group.
https://support.clarivate.com/Endnote/s/?language=en_US
As EndNote now offers support 24 hours 5 days a week, Monday thru Friday, it should be easier than ever to reach us.
Once again, I apologize for our growing pains going to 64bit. Changing from 32bit to 64bit for a database software is much more difficult than it sounds.
Please let us know if you have any other issues that need elaboration of any kind
Thanks!
Steve Hitt