I use EndNote X9 for my doctoral studies. I love the way it integrates so well with Microsoft Word however it drives me crazy how unstable the library is. I learnt the hard way that the library becomes corrupt when it’s stored on a shared drive such as Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive. I now sync with my online EndNote account and this seems better but this has it’s own issues such as combining libraries if you use different libraries; I use multiple computers and issues can occur if you want to open a different library on a computer.
It is essential to backup your EndNote library so that you can restore if (when!) your library corrupts. But there is no obvious means of backing up the library. Most universities tend to ask students to manually backup by going to File > Compressed Library (.enlx) but this really isn’t practical.
Instructions to automatically backup your EndNote library
Below is how I’ve automated a daily backup of my EndNote library in Windows. I hope that it helps you and please be sure to test that you can restore your library from the backup
Step 1: Create the backup script
Open a text editor (such as Notepad) and paste the following script into a new file. Save the file somewhere convenient with the filename ‘endnote.bat‘ (without the single quotes). In the script as below you’ll need to change wherever there is D:\Backups\temp to the folder where you want to save the backups. In addition, change where I have C:\path\to\EndNote\Library to the location of your EndNote library.
@echo off
REM I assume that you are backing up files to D:\Backups (change this as needed)
REM Delete files older than 14 days
ROBOCOPY D:\Backups D:\Backups\temp /mov /minage:14
del D:\Backups\temp /q
REM Set todays date in YYYYMMDD
set mydate=%date:~10,4%%date:~7,2%%date:~4,2%
echo %mydate%
REM Create a directory
mkdir "D:\Backups\temp\%mydate%"
REM Copy to the new folder
robocopy "C:\path\to\EndNote\Library" D:\Backups\temp\%mydate% /e >> D:\Backups\temp\%mydate%\backup_endnote.log
REM ZIP the contents of the new temp folder
"C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" a -tzip D:\Backups\%mydate%-endnote.zip D:\Backups\temp\%mydate% >> D:\Backups\%mydate%-backup-endnote.log
mkdir "D:\Backups\temp\1"
robocopy D:\Backups\temp\1 D:\Backups\temp\%mydate% /purge
rmdir D:\Backups\temp\1
rmdir D:\Backups\temp\%mydate%
Step 2: Install 7-Zip
Install the latest version of 7-zip on your computer. This is needed to compress the library which can be very large. Accept the defaults when installing 7zip.
Step 3: Setup a schedule to run daily
Setup a scheduled task to run the endnote.bat file you saved previously.
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