EndNote 21

To create a manual back-up of your library, use Windows Explorer (or Finder for Mac) to navigate to where your EndNote library files are stored.

Select/Highlight both files - your EndNote library (.enl file), AND it’s associated Data (.Data) folder. Right-click and Copy both files, then Paste them to a different folder on your computer, and/or to a USB drive or other portable storage device.

Note:  It is essential that you copy the data folder as well as the library file, otherwise the back-up of your EndNote library will not function properly.

The University Library does not recommend using EndNote libraries with cloud-based services, such as OneDrive,Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive, Sharepoint, etc, due to synchronization issues with these services that can corrupt your EndNote library if you access/update it directly from the cloud.

Clarivate notes on their website that EndNote was not designed to be compatible with cloud storage, and recommends:

• only saving compressed libraries to these locations; and/or
• not directly opening and working from EndNote libraries saved to cloud storage without first saving them elsewhere.

A number of users on the Clarivate forums have reported problems with corrupted files from use of active libraries with cloud-based services.

Other universities have also advised users not to save active EndNote libraries to cloud storage.