EndNote for iPad

A few follow-up comments:

By “…add a mechanism for requesting additional space” - you mean enabling users to buy more file storage space on EndNote Web? How much storage and at what reasonable price point?

As for “…direct sync with the computer…” - this does not exist. Yes, it is possible for some users to connect an iOS device with a Macintosh computer but this does not actually synchronize the two - it simply allows them to move data. We have invested tons of time, effort, and money in a cloud-based synchronization system [that thousands of customers specifically requested] that works across many different platforms. This is a much more efficient approach.

I’m quite happy with the new iPad app. Sync with EndNote Web works perfect. I agree, that a automatically download pdf function is a must. PDF annotation is very basic and could be improved. I would love to see some more features like in other annotation apps like GoodReader or GoodNotes (in my opinion the best annotation functions). Further automatic sync of annotation is a must. Manually sync over dropbox (ex-import) is very time consuming. I know that is a lot of work but I look forward to the update!

I work on many different projects and I group them as group sets in EndNote. I would love to see the same sets of groups also in the iPad app. In the iPad version I have a bunch of unsorted groups. Group sets that can be showed or not would enhance the overview of the literature.

Thanks for the input.

Improved PDF annotations and Group Sets are things we are working on now. Yes - they will be a fair amount of work but this will be a worthwhile effort that will positively impact many of our customers.

Jason Rollins, the EndNote team

I agree with the comments posted thus far on annotation and more flexibility for syncing.  On the syncing issue, the way I like to work is to download attachments to my iPad EndNote so that I can read them on my commute.  Once read, though, I want to delete them from my iPad (to save space) but not from my PC.  As it works now, there is no easy way to do this.  I have worked out a very clumsy workaround (i.e. save the pdf from my PC EndNote to my hard disk, delete it from my iPad, remove the reference from my iPad favorites, sync - in which case it is deleted from my PC, and then re-attach it to my PC EndNote reference).  A flexible syncing setup should be able to address this and the other issues raised on the forum.

All in all, though, a very welcome app that works pretty well.

As always, thanks for the input.

Hmm - this is quite tricky. The basic idea of “Synchronization” is that (ideally) everything is synchronized everywhere - wiht one click of a button. Asking to sometimes have PDFs available on one platform but not others could be a real challenge. This is sort of what we have tried to accommodate in the current implementation of the iPad app - to help save space in iPad memory. But it is a one-way solution and, as everyone can see from the feedback, not a particularly satisfactory one.

We need to think about how we can try to make this more flexible.

Jason Rollins, the EndNote team

Well, on my outlook, I select the folders I want access to when I am on the road, and updated on my laptop, and others, that I CAN access if I need them, but requires me to vpn in or webmail in.  Couldn’t there be a Group specific choice that synchs those that are needed, but not them all, or could be retrieved from the cloud.  Also, on my(soon to disappear Blackberry, frown)  phone I can chose if I want to synch one way or the other or both… with outlook. … But I am not an iPad user, so not sure how these translate to that device. 

Hi Jason,

Thanks for the feedback.  And yes, I’m sure that it’s a little tricky.  But in a way, there already is one-way synchronization in that the pdf attachments on my PC are not automatically uploaded to my iPad (unless their corresponding references are designated as favorites).  Naively, would it not be possible to have the process work in reverse?  That is, do not sync pdf attachments (or lack of) if a reference is not designated as a favorite?  That way, once a reference is undesignated as a favorite, its attached pdf files could be deleted without affecting the desktop version.  Or something like that. 

Improving PDF file attachment handling is one of our top priorities for improving the iPad app and something the team is working on now. We are hopeful that we can accomodate the various workflows suggested here. A few caveats however:

  • Remember that we need to pick a default and that - by default - file attachments cannot be both synchronized everywhere at once and also only be located in some select places - the default needs to be one or the other and no matter which we pick all customers will not necessarily be happy with it.

  • We are being very responsive to input for the app - in less than two weeks since launch of the EndNote for iPad app we have already pushed out one update to the app store, made substantial improvements to the EndNoteSync services, and have another update in beta testing that we hope to get to Apple in the next few days.

  • What is described in this thread is very likely months of work and not something we can push out in a few days. So, a little patience will be appreciated as we work to improve the app and accommodate all of the input; trust that we are listening and working to get your ideas incorporated.

Please keep the suggestions and feedback coming and always feel free to reach out to me directly.

Jason Rollins, the EndNote team

[jason DOT rollins AT thomsonreuters DOT com]

Hi sirs,

I understand that you are looking to different clouds systems to add in the ipad besides dropbox.  Could you take a look to  box. (https://www.box.com/personal/)..)   

thank you

Does anyone know if EndNote for iPad has Cite While You Write that will work with Pages on the iPad??? I want to be able to create and add to a bibliography as I work using Pages on the iPad…

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Hi Jason,

Glad to hear about how the development will be proceeding for the next little while.  A lot of thought and work has clearly gone into the app.  I for one think that it works pretty well right now - certainly for the 1st version.  And yes, of course, the things that we are all mentioning will require months of work.  And it’s true the syncing will be a tough issue.  Satisfying all of the (sometimes contradicotry) requests will be impossible.  Details aside, though, there is one thing that I think should not be part of the syncing - all of the pdfs should not be automatically uploaded to the iPad.  Unlike for our desktops, space is at a premium on the iPad and loading it up with pdfs would be a non-starter for many users I think.  For what it’s worth…

For me, the whole point of having Endnote on the iPad is so that I can carry my PDFs around with me. I strongly feel that all attachments should automatically sync to the iPad. In fact, I have to confess that I am not imaginative enough to figure out why one would want Endnote on their iPad without the attachments, particularly since there is no Cite-While-You-Write functionality on the iPad (and I don’t miss that-I use LaTeX).

As others have mentioned, I also think it’s important that the annotations not be iPad-specific. And I will add another vote for SugarSync integration.

I’m excited about the potential for the app but I can’t imagine really using it unless

  1.  it has the ability to read and annotate the PDFs connected with my Endnote Library (and sync those changes back to my computer). I really urge Endnote, if possible,  to try to make seamless integration with iAnnotate and/or Goodreader rather than spending a lot of time trying to recreate the wheel. 

2) it syncs really well with Microsoft Word for the iPad when it finally come out

Agree with ejhutch9125 on wanting to know if there is an EndNote CWYW function for Pages on the iPad.

I teach EndNote classes and had someone ask me today if this function existed. She has a laptop about to die and doesn’t want to replace it if the iPad can do everything she needs.

 

I also would like to know if there is an EndNote CWYW function for Pages on the iPad.

I teach EndNote classes and had someone ask me today if this function exists. Her laptop is about to die and she doesn’t want to replace it if EndNote for iPad can do everything she needs it to do.

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Dear Mr. Rollins,

thanks for accepting so much feedback. I’m personally experiencing many problems with this crashing bug, too, unfortunately. When I tap on a next reference, the EndNote iPad app crashes very often. Because of that, I can’t really use it. I am using an iPad 4th gen. (64GB, WiFi-only) with newest iOS 6.1. Yesterday, I managed to upload my EndNote desktop library (currently using EN X6.0.2 on an Apple Macintosh with OS X 10.8.2) on my EN Web account. Then I entered my EN Web account details on the iPad app settings to synchronize it. Then I wanted to go through every reference, see, if the bibliographical information came into the iPad app correctly and download the PDFS in the File Attachments field by tapping on “Not yet downloaded”. Bu then the whole app crashes. Sometimes, I can go on like this for the next 5, or 6 references, sometimes for the next 10 or so, but sometimes for the next 1 or 2 until it crashes. But no matter how many references I’m able to go through, it crashes all the time, so that I’m not able to work with it. Currently I have about 400 references in my library and about 190 with a PDF / Full Text attachment.

I use EndNote since many years now and it became one of the programs, I probably couldn’t live without anymore. I was very excited to see, that it became available for the iPad finally. But this crashing of the app is really nerve-killing and preventing me from working with it. Could you already register this Bug or whatever it is and fix it ASAP?

Thanks for your time!

  • Best regards, M.U.

I would just like to know if my request for very minor feature upgrades has made it through to the developer team? To repeat, I would like to see:

  1. indication and sync of read/unread status with the desktop version

  2. indication in the list of references of whether an individual reference has a pdf attached for possible download

  3. Implementation of standard iPad autocorrection (auto-capitalization, double-tap space for period, etc.) in the text entry field, especially the notes field. 

Additionally, after using the pdf reader for several weeks, I would like to point out that the scrolling can get very annoying, because you sometimes have to first touch the screen once to activate scrolling, and then again to actually scroll. There needs to be a touch-once-to-scroll to make it more like scrolling in every other app.

I am having some majorly annoying issues with crashing. I appear to be able to sync just fine, but when I add a new batch of references via my desktop my ipad app will crash when I tap on one (but not necessarily all) of the new refs. It will also crash on some of my older apps. This issue appears to resolve itself at random, after much frustrated tapping and navigating all over the place. Currently, I cannot access two of the three newest references without the app crashing. Any suggestions?

I am hopeful that the update we submitted to Apple last week will fix the crashes folks are experiencing with the current build. I will post here as soon as we hear from Apple the the update is live.

Jason Rollins, the EndNote team

It is important to be able to make all sorts of notes and markings in the pdf, and then sync these. The functions in iAnnotate would be nice.