Problem with formatting and unformatting citations

I have a new problem–

I need to unformat my citations so that I can create a master document in ms word 2003.  Before I’ve got to the point of adding sev documents together I have tried unformatting and formatting the citatations to ensure that everything is going smoothly.  This is when the problem starts.

Unformatting is fine - the field codes appear in the right place.  When I reformat however, it goes through many of the references and asks me to choose them from my library again - prompting me to insert or ignore.  If I choose ignore the field codes remain - of course I can’t hand in my thesis this way. 

What can I do?  If I open my library all the refs are there - they have not gone missing.

A further consideration is that I am now using Endnote X whereas the document was created with V9.  I dont’ think this is the main cause of the problem because I had this issue with V9 software yesterday.  I have had to switch computers due to laptop failure.

Thank you.

Etienne

Hi there.

In my experience, the problem you report with unformatting and reformatting citations generally results from one of the following causes:

  1. A library has had more than one copy of a reference. One of these copies has been cited and subsequently deleted.

  2. A reference has been cited from a library which is no longer in use.

  3. Key information in the reference has been edited i.e. author name or year of publication.

The main point to remember is that once the citations are unformatted, the CWYW function will search for a match for the three reference identifiers - the first author, the year of publication, and the record number e.g. {Amin, 2006 #682}

If you know which reference is indicated by an unformatted citation such as this, it’s an easy matter to check that the details are correct, and if necessary, to change the record number to match the library entry.

I’ll be interested to hear if this sorts the problem for you.

Peter

1 Like

Thank you, Peter.

The problem, it appears, was due to references which had been edited as you suggested.

Etienne