Merging references

Hi Jason,

Any update and time scale about this feature ?

I cannot think about a more useful element than “merge references” for the next update of EndNotes… which could be followed by improving the way DOI are looked for and identified in a pdf file (which it-self could be complemented by extracting (at least) the title of a manuscript when the DOI is not found…).

The “merge references” feature seems to be expected by most customers and appears to be essential to convince new ones to purchase the software… maybe it is the time to wrap up and release this feature in the next update.

Best Wishes

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There is a simple reason for this. New users probably already use another program for managing references. But most of these programs do not allow the user to export reference data including pdfs. So after an export, you end up with all your pdfs on one end and a text file on the other. You only get all your references back if you import both the text file and the pdfs. But in that case, EndNote poses the problem that you have lots of duplicates (in my case several hundred). This makes changing the reference software extremly time consuming, especially if your library is very large. But time is a scarce ressource for researchers. So probably many researchers will stick to the software they already use although they know it is less powerful.

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Has there been any further development on this?

I am using X7 and it hasnt got the feature.

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amen.  Please allow the merging of two references.  – Ancestry.com even lets us merge two similar “ancestors” who should be one! 

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The same problem PLEASE ¡ it would be extremely helpful

Another desperate user¡¡

Joaquin

The same problem PLEASE ¡ it would be extremely helpful

Another desperate user¡¡

Joaquin

Any news about that? I think that it is a must now …

july 2017 using x8 on Mac… PLEASE… LET ME MERGE 

july 2017 using x8 on Mac… PLEASE… LET ME MERGE 

THIS IS OF CRITICAL IMPORTANCE.  Here is the scenario.  We import a pdf and it doesn’t get recognized with metadata.  Then we search the article in the web bar for pubmed and get the reference.  Now we have two references in our catalogue. We need to be able to highlight the incomplete ref that has the pdf, highlight the complete ref without the pdf, and click on a nonexsitent button called “Merge”  that drops the pdf into the completed reference, and deletes the pdf-containing incomplete reference from our library.  This is the one major missing feature in the software IMO.  

Amen! please give us the option to merge duplicates!

I agree. 

Here’s how _ I _ do it. (The hard way?)

  1. There is an option to “Find Duplicates” under the References Tab , about halfway down.

    However, unless there are enough fields filled in, the program doesn’t recognize that they are the same.

  1. You need to fill in several fields so that the references are similar enough for Endnote to react. 

  2. Once you have filled in several fields, the program asks which reference you want to keep. Essentially throwing out any fields that you haven’t copied over.

Note: I usually begin by selecting two similar files that I DON’T want, getting rid of one, then reselecting another two, etc. leaving the good one (the one with the PDF, in my case) for last…

Please, Clarivate , get your programmers to fix this issue. 

Here is my idea on how to perhaps do this easily:

Keep the Find Duplicates option; it can become the merge function. 

Synthesize a merging action within this function, so that when we have at least ( 3? 4?) a certain number of fields filled in that are similar,

  1. It recognizes duplicates

  2. It gives us the option of keeping the one we want, and merging in the information from the one that we have not kept. 

In addition, this option should see whether or not we have more than two similar files.

Currently, Endnote only recognizes two files at once, making it a bit more of a headache to sift through any extra files to see if they are necessary. 

There are a variety of competetive software applications out there. It is just a matter of time that Mendeley, Zotero, or one of the other catches up. 

Please update the software and make it even more worth our money. It is a good piece of software, but there are some issues that need to be fixed.

I agree with franktietze. Find reference updates usually does not work despite access to PubMed and Web of Science. It has never worked for me even though I had Author, Year and Title saved in the reference. The only times it worked was when DOI or accession number was manually added to the the reference.

I would also like to have a function for merging duplicates. Deleting the one of the duplicates seems to introduce problems in the reference list for the documents where the that same reference (with a different record number) has been used.

5 years later, this feature is still missing and needed.

I understand that prioritization is difficult to set and that not everybody can be happy about the result, but maybe a poll among users could be set… 5 years later, this feature is still needed then maybe it could go up on the priority list.

Fingers crossed…

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YES! So that I can use the syncing feature among my various devices, I have gone to a single DB for all my references. But I have decades of single project bibliographies that I have incorporated into the Master DB. But they have different groups, different keywords, different labels, and I don’t want to lose that information!

So a merge function is a MUST. 

There is already the  code to add material to a field. Surely that can be used so that if Author and Title are similar/identical, or Author Title and Date or select options, then the material from reference 2, 3, 4, in all fields except author/title select option is added at the end of reference 1. 

It is now 5 years (at least) that this has been a much-requested feature, much more than lots of the glitzy web thingies. PLEASE do this soonest!

Thanks

User from Endnote 2 forward

…100% agree. So limited without this feature.

Definitely agree. Merging would be of tremendous help.

I stumbled accross this threat because I am transfering my library from Papers3 to EndNote and encountered exactly the same problem as many people here, in that I ended up with lots of references und lots of seperate entries with imported pdfs that failed to match to any metadata. Like everybody here I was looking for a merge function to merge the entry with the proper metadata with the entry with the pdf, but had to learn that this function does not exist. So here is what I did instead as a workaround:

I noticed that when I imported my library as a .ris or .xml file from Papers3 to EndNote, the references had a broken link to the pdf. The workaround described in the following shows you how to fix the broken links by placing the pdfs exactly in the location where EndNote is looking for them and then using the “converting to relative links” function to move the pdfs into the EndNote library folder. You might need to play around a little to get it to work, but I hope these instructions will save you some time to get it done.

  1. In Papers3 export your entire library as a .ris file (.xml should also work).
  2. Copy your Library.papers3 folder.
  3. Create a new library in EndNote if you don’t have one already.
  4. Make a backup copy of your Endnote Library (even if it’s empty still).
  5. Turn Sync with EndNote-web off while you perform the next steps to avoid duplicate copies of references if you have to play around a little to get it to work.
  6. In EndNote import the .ris file (Edit>Import>File). Make sure you select the file type correctly under “Import Option”.
  7. Cancel the EndNote Find Full Text feature, because you don’t want to add full text from the internet but rather use your PDFs.
  8. Now you should have all your references in your EndNote library but the paths to the PDFs are incorrect, so the PDFs won’t show.
  9. To fix this, check where EndNote is searching for the PDFs by right-clicking the tab with the missing PDF (of any imported reference) and selecting “Open with Adobe Acrobat DC”. An error message shows you where EndNote is looking for the file. For me that was for example C:\Program Files (x86)\EndNote X8\localhost\Volumes\Sandra_Data\Library.papers3\Files… or \Articles… or \Books… or \Reports… depending on the type of reference.
  10. Create the folders exactly as in the above identified path and copy the folders (Files, Articles, Books, Reports, etc.) that contain all your pdfs from the Library.papers3 file to the newly created folder.
  11. Check whether the pdfs now show up in EndNote.
  12. Revert back to your original EndNote Library by deleting your library files and pasting the backup copy in the same spot. (I don’t know if this step and the following two steps are necessary, but that’s the way I ended up doing it.)
  13. Now import the .ris file again. You will notice that the step “Indexing PDFs” now takes quite a bit longer, because there actually are pdfs there for EndNote to find.
  14. Cancel the “EndNote Find Full Text” feature again, because you don’t want to add full text from the internet but rather use your own PDFs.
  15. Now all your PDFs should be visible in EndNote. Unfortunately there are no annotations visible that were made in Papers3, because Papers3 does not save the annotations directly in the PDFs.
  16. Now you will want to make sure that all the PDFs are saved in your EndNote Library folder and not in the folder that you created (inside Program Files (x86) in my case). For that select all your imported references, right click and select File Attachments>Convert to Relative Links.
  17. The pdfs should now be all saved in the EndNote .Data library file in the “PDF” folder. You should see folders with random numbers and each folder should contain a pdf file.
  18. Delete the folders you created in step 10 (with all the PDFs copied from the Papers3 Library).
  19. Reactivate sync option if you use it.

About the annotations in pdfs in Papers3:

  1. You can export the annotated pdfs from Papers3 by exporting “pdfs and media files” and choosing the option “with annotations”.
  2. I could not find a way to import the annotated pdfs other than manually replacing the pdfs in the EndNote library file with the annotated versions (keeping the name the same).
  3. I tried using the import pdf function of EndNote, but this will create a new entry in your library and there is no easy way to merge duplicated entries in EndNote (like it can easily be done in Papers3). Also the matching of metadata to the imported pdfs failed more often than not.

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.