• Writing with Word
  • Problems In Word?
  • EndNote Problems?
    

Please consult first our (Shadow Home Page), in particular the "How to" Hints. If you followed the advices given there, and still have difficulties, this is the right place to continue reading.

Problems In Word?

Word is a difficult beast and so is EndNote. I often encountered difficulties with the two and their working together. Even if I religiously followed their instructions, I got for my liking only too often an installation that did not work at all.

First, check whether your installation of EndNote is ok. I assume as of this writing you are using 'EndNote X5'. If all is as it should be, then you should see the 'EndNote X5' submenu from within Word in your Tools menu similar to this:

If you can't see the EndNote menu at all, then you need to check several things and perform additional steps to fix the issue. I recommend:

1. Launch EndNote and choose menu command "EndNote X5 -> Customizer..."

2. Check whether you get a screen similar to this
   

3. If it doesn't, e.g. it looks like this
   
   then make sure it looks like this
   
   and then press the button <Next> until you get a window similar to this
   
   Note, critical for what I discuss here is only the Cite While You Write (CWYW) component shown at the top. Note also, according to my experience I always see the CWYW component unchecked, regardless of the fact that it is working well, i.e. seems to be installed fine. But that probably means nothing, EndNote is so buggy!

4. Relaunch Word, allow the creation of an untitled document - silly Word does otherwise not allow you to use the here needed menu commands - and check whether you can see the EndNote menu. If not, no need to give up yet.

5. Check in Word its preferences by choosing menu command "Word -> Preferences..." and there check out the tab "File Locations" (as of this writing I am using Word from Office 2011). It's item "Startup" should define the correct folder where the EndNote CWYW plug in resides, i.e. folder '/Applications/Microsoft Office 2011/Office/Startup/Word/' (shown here as 'HDX:Applications:Microsoft Office 2011:Office:Startup:Word:' when the startup's volume is named 'HDX'):
   
   Note, for 'EndNote X5' the CWYW plug-in is named 'EndNote CWYW Word 2011.bundle'. The Customizer of 'EndNote X5' should have installed it in Word's startup folder as defined in this preference. If necessary set the folder correctly and go back to repeat the previous step.

6. It may well be you still can't see the EndNote menu within Word (my case, which BTW triggered me to write this troubleshooting contribution). There is an additional setting in Word that needs to be correct: Menu command "Tools -> Templates and Add-Ins..." should give you something similar to this:
   
   If it doesn't, e.g. because it looks similar to this
   
   then you may fix your problem by making sure these settings look like the ones shown above. At least in my case this helped. And I can now see the 'EndNote X5' menu in Word again.

EndNote Problems?

They are too numerous to be all listed here. However, I have been able over the years to figure out many techniques that allow you to circumvent the big shortcomings of EndNote.

Unfortunately that company never followed my two recommendations fully through. They only listened to my first recommendation with respect to duplicates, but not to the second recommendation on how to circumvent some of their fundamental flaws in their data base design. That second recommendation was to treat labels as a full equivalent to record numbers, whenever a user uses settings as shown below. A pity! Thus I am afraid that the fundamental deficiencies of EndNote will probably never disappear, regardless how easy that fix would be; but that's all together a different story.

First I recommend to follow the instructions I wrote in several documents, which you all find here.

Moreover, I recommend you my very brief hints on how to make good use of EndNote despite its flaws. In particular I recommend to use Labels instead of the disaster-prone record numbers as the main key for your EndNote data base. In my experience this is of utmost importance to obtain an acceptable solution for all the bibliographical needs a scientist may have during a career. In my case this means using a main key (data base jargon) that is permanently associated with a record in all my data bases. I use three: First the central one being a FileMaker data base; then I use the wonderful BibDesk for at least all my writing with TeX; and then thirdly I use EndNote whenever I have to write with the also awkward Word. In the latter case this means using labels instead of the terrible record numbers. One checkbox and a field choice does this all:

And finally, since I regularly transfer records from one data base to another, notably I repeatedly import updated records into EndNote, key is also this preference in EndNote:

To add this option was my first recommendation to the EndNote making company, the recommendation they fortunately followed through. If they would listen to my second recommendation, which is to match during bibliography formatting temporary citations whenever the labels in Word match a unique record in the EndNote data base(s) currently open, then I would say that EndNote would have become more or less usable. And I would say this regardless of its remaining basic flaws as a data base. However, as it stands since many EndNote versions - I first suggested my fixes to them when EndNote 5 (!) was in use - my recommendation to make better use of EndNote by switching into the Label-mode, means to have to boringly and repeatedly manually match a temporary citation with an EndNote record. To cross-reference some labels in the notes field is enough to cause EndNote to cough up and claim there would be only an ambiguous match between temporary citation and data base records. This is typically complete nonsense in a well maintained EndNote data base. I wouldn't lament if this would be only a small inconvenience. However, it is not, since what EndNote insists on is not only tedious and time wasting, but also error-prone. I tend to get so bored with this mechanical matching when writing long and complex articles, that the probability of making an error gets dangerously high. I wish Thomson Research would one day follow my second recommendation through. But I fear that will be, if ever, long after I will have retired, sic!

Regardless of all these difficulties, my recommendation is to switch to the Label-mode by setting the preferences as shown in above figures. That improves EndNote's use at least by so much that EndNote becomes partly tolerable. On top of these design flaws it remains also too buggy and can't be called a good product. But used in this mode it brings all in all some advantages over a manually edited list of references for any scientific document citing, say, more than two dozen references. But be warned and wary of bugs. This means keep always many version copies of your word documents to revert to an earlier stage if all gets hopeless because EndNote bugs surface and start destroying your carefully written texts, e.g. by corrupting temporary citations.