Unit 1.3 Search an EndNote library

You can search for any term in your EndNote library. For example, in the sample Paleo library used in Unit 1.1 you could search for references which have a publication year later than 1990 and contain the term dinosaur.

Open the library. From the REFERENCES menu select SEARCH REFERENCES.
In each search text box, enter a search term which can be a word, phrase, date, character, reference type, record number, etc.
Choose the field to search. Choose Any Field to search the term anywhere in the record or choose Author, Title, Year etc to search the term only in one of those fields. Don't use Any Field to search a year.
Choose Contains or another comparison operator.
- Contains: finds all references where the search field includes the search term.
- Is: finds all references in which the entire content of the search field is exactly the same as the search term. By leaving the field blank you can find empty fields.
- Is less than etc operators are especially useful for Year searching.
Choose AND, OR, NOT to combine search terms. See Use Boolean operators if you don't know how to use AND, OR, NOT.
Terms are searched from the top to the bottom box: terms in the first two boxes are combined then the result is combined with the third box. To add more search boxes, click More then Add Field.
Click More for matching and truncation options. By default, EndNote truncates left and right, finding a search string anywhere.
- Check Match Words to avoid truncation and find only those records where the search term matches the words or phrase exactly e.g find dinosaur but not dinosaurs.
- Check Match Case if you want to find only those records where the search term matches the case exactly e.g. a search for the term Dinosaur will find only those records that contain a capital D in the term.
- Check Use Full Text Index to find only right truncated words e.g. ment would find mental but not development
Click Search to display the subset of references which include the search terms.
You can use the Save Search and Load Search options under More to save a search strategy and run it again later. You can also use Set Default to set a preferred layout for future searches.
To return to the whole set of references again, select SHOW ALL REFERENCES from the REFERENCES menu.

Search for a word within a single EndNote reference

It can be useful to search for a keyword within an EndNote record that has a long abstract or note.

Open the EndNote record.
Search the term through References > Go To.

Find duplicate references

By default, references are considered duplicates if they have the same reference type, and the Author, Year and Title fields are identical. (These criteria can be changed through EDIT> PREFERENCES > DUPLICATES.) To find duplicates:

Display all references in a library (if necessary, use SHOW ALL REFERENCES from the REFERENCES menu).
From the REFERENCES menu select FIND DUPLICATES to display any duplicate references.
References which appear similar but actually have slight differences in relevant fields will not be identified as duplicates.

Look at duplicate references before deleting them.

Do not delete a reference that you have cited in a Word document (covered in Unit 4). Check the record number (e.g. #34) of the citation in the Word document and leave that numbered reference in the EndNote Library.
Avoid deleting useful abstracts or extra publication data. If necessary, copy and paste the useful data to a reference you are keeping.
Select the reference to be deleted. Choose REFERENCES > DELETE REFERENCES and OK.