I am using Endnote X. I use Word 2003, CWYW, and instant formatting. While editing my text, I found several errors in the footnotes caused by mistakes made while entering data into my Endnote Bibliography–small things like an extra space where it did not belong or commas inserted into the data. In one case, a double author appeared where only one should have been used.
How can I get the bibliographic citations in my footnotes to update the references that have been corrected? I’ve been deleting them and the re-inserting them. But that is slow–especially since I need to add page numbers to every citation. Is there a way to ask Endnote to search the open library, find changes in the records, and then make the corrections in the citations in my footnotes?
The easiest way is to unformat and reformat. Sometimes you need to close and open the paper, to fully rid it of the traveling library, which is where it “retains” the old info, and thinks that the record in the library is a different record. If the author has changed, you might have to select that record to insert again. - but that is a pretty painless process cause it usually picks up only the correct one, or a couple to chose from .
It worked (or half worked)! A change I had made to the punctuation of a record in the library appeared in the correct format in the text once I hit "Format Bibliography under CWYW in Tools. But the double authors still remained even though I had deleted one author from the library records. Is that because Endnote thinks that there are two records? Or are you saying that when you change anything in the author field, you have to cut that record re-insert it? Are there other fields where reformatting will not work? (I did open and close the document by the way.)
So thank you so much because this will save me lots of time!
Changes in author, year (or record number) make Endnote think they are different records. Otherwise I think it usually updates the record. One way to ensure that they are still linked is to try editing the record by selecting the formated citation and using the Word tools>Endnote tools> edit Library reference to make the changes. This automatically retains the correct link, even if you change the Author name (tested in Endnote X2). Unfortunately, you can’t do this from the reference list, it has to be from the citation, which makes it a bit cumbersome, because most of the time you notice the problem in the list and not in the text.
Thank you for that clarification. I’ve been correcting entries in the Library reference list and not from the Tools section of Word. But I will make sure to follow your suggestion in the future. I don’t think I’ll have any problems, however, because I’ve been deleting all the citations and then re-inserting them. This will save me a lot of time.
Could I ask you another question? There are times when you want to use some of the same information to create a new reference. For example, when you have multiple essays in a single book, you don’t want to have to type in all the information on the editors of the book, title, year, etc again or even have to log onto a library to download it. I used to use Nota Bene’s Ibid bibliographical database, where it was easy to “make a duplicate” record and then change the few things that needed to be altered and have the record saved as a new reference. Do you know if this is possible in Endnote X. All I can find is copying a record to a new library and I don’t want to do that.
Copy-paste works fine. select the record you want to make a copy of, (in library view) ctrl C (copy) ctrl V (paste) and you have two. Now open the copy and add/replace the information.
lpell asked:
Could I ask you another question? There are times when you want to use some of the same information to create a new reference. For example, when you have multiple essays in a single book, you don’t want to have to type in all the information on the editors of the book, title, year, etc again or even have to log onto a library to download it. I used to use Nota Bene’s Ibid bibliographical database, where it was easy to “make a duplicate” record and then change the few things that needed to be altered and have the record saved as a new reference. Do you know if this is possible in Endnote X. All I can find is copying a record to a new library and I don’t want to do that.