Problem with Endnote already...

[yoyo17]

Kind of minor but pretty annoying.

 

So somehow, whenever I open Endnote, it opens to show only the middle bottom section and the big white section on the right about the article details.  The column (in light blue) under My Library, and the box where you can search Author, Year, and Title are made invisible.  Every time I open up Endnote or change libraries, I have to manually drag from the left to the right to see the groups I made and drag down to see the search function.  The part where it shows the article, author and title have somehow been expanded. 

 

This is quite annoying and frustating.  I don't know how this happened, it just randomly one day decided to do this and I can't fix it nor find a way online to fix this or explain it adequately.  I have to do this every time I use the software and would like to just see everything when I open up a library.

 

Does anyone know how to restore back to defaults or fix this? 

 

Thanks!

 

Okay, no idea what I did but somehow fixed it for now...but if anyone knows the cause and how to fix, that'd be appreciated...

Edited July 20, 2015 by yoyo17

[aberrant]

I actually don't know how to fix it since I haven't use it for 2 years (and counting). However, if other issues persist in the future, I would strongly recommend Mendeley for citation. My boss is a huge fan of EndNote but I hate its poor ability and flexibility to search the detail info of an article and specific formats.

[juilletmercredi]

I hate EndNote! I recommend Zotero. If you have a Mac, you might want to try Sente - that's the one I use now, and I really like it.

[Chiqui74]

Is there a product that works on Mac and PC? My laptop is a Mac and my desktop is a PC, and I use them both so I need something that works on both platforms.  I've been pondering which one to use and I still haven't made a decision.

[rising_star]

Chiqui74, you could go with a web-based option like Mendeley, Zotero, or Proquest FLOW. 

[yoyo17]

Well I think my tolerance for this software is running out.  Unless there's some miracle hidden folder with my library stashed somewhere, Endnote just went and deleted a library that took weeks to assemble.  With all the highlights, annotations I made and references gone with it, I'm ready to switch to another citation manager.

So some background, had a library with 130 references in it, highlighted, labeled, and grouped, nice feature I like a lot. But if the Endnote application is open, and you take your USB out before closing it, Endnote goes nuts, even if you put the USB back in unlike MS Word.  So I started to always close the application and then take the USB out. 

Well I did just that and this time Endnote/Windows came up w/a message.  Didn't read it (thought nothing serious) and when I plugged my USB back in, the library was gone.  Completely gone.  I mean deleted, vanished.  I searched everywhere using search function, I looked for .enl files, nothing.  Opened up Endnote and looked at most recent, still there but opened and no pathway existed.  Went on my computer hard disk, nothing.  Went in recycle bin, nothing.

Weeks of effort now flushed down the drain by endnote. 

Sigh so all I have left is a synced online library but the original is gone.  Thank GOD I synced the one I lost and not the others because Endnote conveniently gives only one library that can be synced at a time and no others.  This is a very common complaint I find as many researchers manage multiple projects.  

So I'd like to know how to export that online, synced library back to Endnote and make a new one.  Also how to export those references and groups, annotations, highlights to a different citation manager.  Is there a manager that lets you highlight, make notes/annotations on the files?  I hope to God this is possible.  i can't believe Endnote would do this to me.  Am I the only one to have experienced this frustration? This isn't the first time I had a problem.  Though I managed to fix previous issues somehow mysteriously.  Otherwise, I have to start from scratch manually again. 

I'm just really pissed right now and want to smash something.

Edited August 28, 2015 by yoyo17

[EdNeuroGrl]

I almost exclusively use endnote online. That way everything I use is just browser based so the OS doesn't matter.

I have some experience with the desktop version, but I really dislike it. It is bulky and doesn't provide much over that which is available for the online version.

I tried Mendeley but it also drove me nuts... but that is becasue I needed to import a list of references from Web of Science and the two don't get on well. 

So my preference for Endnote online is mostly because it is easy to use, doesn't take a TON of resources, and communicates well (format-wise) with all of the databases I use for literature.

That doesn't help much with the question directly, but if you want to try something else, this may be helpful.