Microsoft Word’s “Track Changes” and Endnote are synthetic lethals.
From The Futile Cycle. "A synthetic pair of genes are two gene variants that alone are fine, but when combined into the same organism, cause it to die."
Why? When you have Endnoted a paper and send it to a friend or coauthor, and they make changes that are Tracked, and this includes reformatting the bibliography, all the bibliographic references become marked as changes (the workaround is to turn off Track Changes when you reformat, then turn it back on again. But this is a computer, folks, so why should you need to do something that is properly automatic?), leaving you with a file that is basically unreadable. Bleh.
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I don't use Endnote or Word, but sometimes I get manuscripts to look at that have been written with both. It took me a couple of manuscripts to realise that OpenOffice doesn't know what to do with the Endnote stuff, so just deletes it.
That's what you get when you don't use open standards. I saw a comment recently that Word is so bad it isn't even compatible with itself.
Bob
Yeah - I recently lost all the Endnote field codes in a Word paper I opened in OpenOffice. Fortunately I had a backup. The trick there is to unformat the references in Word before you open the file in OO. Then Endnote can scan the ODT file and format it without trouble.
I'm always amazed that so many people don't realise that Word tracks changes by default.
It is often interesting to have a look at the changes made and by whom in official missives.
Doesn't resolve your problem, but it is strange that it is the default setting.
This is why I like being in the field of mathematics- I don't have to use any of Microsoft's products! Most articles are produced in LaTeX, and bibliographies are text files that use an additional piece called 'Bibtex'. There's a bit of a learning curve, but it's really much easier to use than EndNote and far more flexible!
cheers-
Eric
I hung my head low and shook it when I got reviews for my shrimp species description and one reviewer painstaking corrected all the 'reformatted' changes that were in the original document. It was very nice of him and must have took a lot of work, but if he didn't format a reference then he could have saved a lot of work and alot of work from me in answer all his comments...
Oh and the other 'anonymous' reviewer? Apparently, he didn't notice that his name, date and time were stamped to every comment he made on the manuscript...
sigh
I use EndNote (tutored some of the courses on it here at UQ), and have always been told best way to use EndNote is only work on the Word doc with Endnote refs in unformatted mode (and get used to doing it that way). The only times you should format the EndNote refs is 1) if you want to see what the final formatted version will look like (and unformat again for further editing) or 2) at the end to produce the final formatted product.
For what it's worth (and here's a shameless plug) there's a draft (complete with typos I don't have time to fix) worksheet on Endnote basics on my half built website.
Sorry to be so late to the party. According to the EndNote website, "The EndNote 8 and earlier CWYW tools are not compatible with Word's Track Changes feature." (bolding added) I would imagine, with enough complaints from users, it would be something they would fix in a newer version. I think I'll be sticking with Open Office. (leans over and gently pats penguin on the head)