Do not delete when merging/deduplicating

Currently when endnote detects a duplicate and you are asked to keep one, the one you do not keep is deleted. That is, it is removed from groups it was in, and becomes a broken link in documents. This is unintuitive and non-functional.

Expected and ideal behavior would be for the references to be merged, where any links referring to one of the references now refers to the other (or a new merged reference), and now a single, identical, reference appears in all groups that had either of the two originals.

Can the CWYW matching be used here as well?

Yes, please for the love of god add this feature… 

My problem arose because I unknowingly added the same references several times, placed each in different groups, and now I would like to have the group information carry over to whichever reference I don’t delete in the duplicate search. In other words, I would like to merge duplicate references and maintain either or both of their group designations.

A few related suggestions:

-Add a warning when a user is about to add a duplicate reference to their library. All operating systems and file management systems have this feature. It will help to curb the duplicate issue in general.

-The group(s) each reference is in should be listed as a field that can be checked. Seems silly that the only way the group ID can be shown is by clicking References>Record Summary.

Please update the forum on these issues. A basic issue like this should not persist for 5+ years. It has been brought up in multiple threads over the years.