Hello everyone,

I have lost the original Endnote library for my document, and to recreate it, I exported all the references in the document to a travelling library, which I now use as my current library. I don't know if that was the right thing to do, though, because now this library doesn't seem to be fully linked to the document, in the sense that if I add a new reference to the library, cite it in the text and Update Citations, the new reference appears in the References list at the end of the document, *however*, if I edit an existing reference in the library and then Update Citations, the changes that I made to that reference are not visible in the References list.


This is probably due to the fact that - as far as I know at least - EndNote does not allow you to clearly specify to which document a given library belongs to, or vice-versa, what libraries are linked to a given document.

Can anyone help put some sense back into my library, such that changes made to individual references in EndNote are also reflected in the References list upon refreshing? Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

PS: using Word 2007 and Endnote X2 Bld 3210.

Obviously there's a checklist of things to go through before taking on more serious surgery. Have you tried converting the entire document to field codes, copying and pasting the text to a new document and then updating the citations/bibliography in the new clean document?

Hey Sylvester, thanks for your reply. I have done something very similar to that: I have unformatted all citations (Word|EndNote tab|Bibliography group|Convert Citations and Bibliography button|Convert to Unformatted Citations) and then reformatted them (Word|EndNote tab|Bibliography group|Update Citations and Bibliography). Back when I had my original library, this would just quickly process, without asking me everything, and all the citations&references would get refreshed. Now what happens is, I get a "Select matching reference" window for each individual in-text citation. This is probably because EndNote is confused about the library that it should use.

If I went through with selecting a reference for each in-text citation, this would probably recreate my library as it was before. Unfortunately, this would take a very long time given the number of citations I have right now...

As I understand it, the key procedure is the pasting the text including unformatted citations to the new document. It loses the links to the old library, forcing EndNote to build new links to a single library rather than two libraries, which the old document appears to be trying to do. Provided that the new library uses the same field codes as the old one (i.e. the same code numbers) it should have no problem reformatting the citations and building the bibliography.

OK, I tried that, but after hitting Update Citations, the exact same procedure started, namely I was prompted to find a matching reference for each and every in-text citation.. :-( Anything else I might try?

Okay, check the record numbers are the same, e.g. that {Jones, 2006 #34} in the document has not be renumbered as {Jones, 2006 #57} in the new library (if you haven't set up the record number as field displayed in your library screen, it should say the record number in the title bar of the window when you open the reference).

Hi Sylvester. I'm not sure how to check the number of the reference in the library, but I doubt the unformatting/reformatting method will be able to solve this without having to go through the process of re-associating citations with references.

I have found a workaround, which is not perfect but will do for the moment (while I finish this paper.. starting with the next one I am *most definitely* using a reference management software that is *not* EndNote!). I select all references, Copy Formatted, then paste into the Word document. This way the references get pasted as plain text (not as a field), which means that I cannot use Update Citations but instead have to copy/paste everytime I make a change, but at least the references are correctly entered into the document, matching what's in the library.

Thanks for your help!