Non existent reference in document (letter after year)

EndNote EndNote General
1

Hi All,

Somewhat esoteric problem here.

Going through my bibliography, I noticed that I had 2 references which were exactly the same with the exception that one of the references had the author’s second name initial (so the reference was Wetzel, W. E. etc). When I look through my documents I notice that the year is marked as being 1983a or 1983b. Ok, I figured that this was a double up in Endnote itself (X6.0.2). However, when I went to the reference in Endnote, there is only 1 entry for that particular article. On further investigation, the article that is in Endnote is record number 303 (which is 1983b) and the other article (1983a) is record 3 (which is non-existent in Endnote). I am guessing at some stage I have done some consolidating of the Endnote db and have deleted a double up. 

My problem is that, having deleted the double up (which is record 3) any attempt I make to change the references in my document automatically add 1983b, despite the fact that 1983a does not exist. I have no idea how to resolve this issue.

I initially decided that I could try removing the added letter in the ambiguous citations settings, but this did not solve the problem (I still had the 2 references). In addition to which, I have a number of other refernces which do require the addition of a, b and c after the year.

So I am at a bit of a loss, can’t seem to get rid of either one of the references in my bibliography and can’t stop Endnote from adding the b every time I insert a new reference.

Any advice would be appreciated (photos attached).

Cheers

Brett

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2

Delete the reference that has the record number no longer in existance, and reinsert the other one.  The “missing reference” is currently in the traveling library, and this is the easiest way to fix this.  Other way is to unformat the who document and reformat, and when it hits that citation, it will prompt you for the correct one still in the library.  

3

Thanks,

I have tried this, and it keeps inserting the reference as 1983b. I have also just had it happen when inserting another reference for the first time. There is only 1 record in EndNote and there has never been a double up and when I inserted it for the first time into my document it comes up as being 2008b.

Cheers

Brett

4

Also, can you just clarify what the ‘travelling library’ is?

Thanks

Brett

5

Embedded in an Endnote formatted word document is all the information needed to reformat a paper even without the original library.  You can export the information as a endnote library.  Thus when you delete a reference from your library, it is still embedded in the document.  Unformatting the citations in the document to the temporary endnote form, should   remove this information.  To be absolutely sure, make a copy of the document and after unformating citations remove any fields (on a PC the command is ctrl+shift f9).  then  try reformatting.