Inability to access attachments in EndNote 7X after attempting to Sync with EndNote Online.

Last week, I attempted to sync my EndNote references on my personal desktop computer with EndNote Online. While I managed to open an account and go through the required steps, this ultimately failed as no references were shown in my EndNote Online. I can live with this, but a side effect of doing this, seems to be that subsequently any attachments I have in my EndNote file on my desktop have changed to have the nasty cross on them and I can no longer open them.
I think that to open any attachments, my EndNote.enl file needs to have the same name as an EndNote.data file (although I’m not 100% sure how this works) but I’m thinking this is not the problem here, and I don’t know what is. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Jillian

Any issues with Syncing, I strongly suggest you take straight to the Tech support people.  Phone them.  The contact details are at www.endnote.com/support 

Yes, the .DATA file has to have the same name as the .enl file on your computer and both be located in the same location (the library.enl file and the library.DATA (and its many subfolders therein) live in the same folder, don’t rename or move them independently.  If it didn’t, endnote will not have found the PDFs.  If is it a large library and has many PDFs, it can take time for the sync to complete and you should be able to see a “Sync status” just below the All References “group” on the right handhand menu.  It will tell you if changes haven’t been made.  Since it is a two way street, if the online library is incomplete, it could "cync it back to your desktop, so I regularly make a backup.  You can’t change the library name on your desktop, or it will become disconneced from the sync version in the cloud.  

When syncing, the blue button that initiates the sync is greyed out at the top.  When completed or if there is a problem, you can again check the sync status.  

Thanks very much for your reply Leanne. I did change the name of my EndNote files for the .data. file and the .enl files (because I had a couple of different ones listed as I was trying to identify which was most current). Then I changed the names back again when I realised the two files were linked. Do you think this is likely to be my problem, or not?

Also, as the synching of EndNote has caused me problems, can you tell me how I turn it off?

Thanks

Jillian

Definately your problem, as when you open an enl file without an .DATA folder, it creates a new empty one, and then you won’t have the PDFs.  They will be lost. They were in the .DATA folder. 

Not sure what will happen if you reconnect the original data folder to the .enl file.  It might work… but 

In fact, if you still have the original libraryname.DATA folder, move the whole thing to a new place, and create an empty samename.enl file with a text editor in the same folder (not IN the .DATA folder).  This is really a pointer and opening it with endnote or double clicking on it to allow it to open in endnote, should be able to rescue your library from the information in the .DATA folder which has all the database SQL files to recreate the library.

I don’t see this as a sync problem at all.  

Turning off sync is done in the preferences file.  – remove the user email and password or untick the box (as mine is) so it doesn’t automatically sync.  Then I sync when I want to – and often make a backup before doing so (either thru the compress to and .enlx file, which packs up the .enl and the .DATA folder together into one massive file.)  see my settings in attached image.