EndNote

Find and Remove Duplicates

As you add more and more references to your EndNote Library, from a variety of databases, it is likely that you will get duplicate records for the same item.

To avoid anomalies in your citations and references once you start adding them to your Word document, you need to ensure that you only have one record for each item.

• Go to the EndNote toolbar/menu > Library > Find Duplicates 
• Any duplicate records will be displayed side-by-side for you to compare and select which record to keep. Any differences are highlighted.
• You can edit records in the Duplicates window to add information from one record to another if desirable.
• Generally, you should keep the older record, as this is likely to be the one you have edited, added attachments to, and most importantly, already used for citations in your document.
• Select records to keep by clicking Keep this Record above the preferred record.
• If you wish to retain a set of duplicates, click Skip.
• If you wish to exit the duplicate-finding process, click Cancel (any remaining duplicates will remain in your library).

Watch a video on finding and removing duplicates (1 min):

You can also set which fields to match (the less fields selected the more possible duplicates it will find) by setting preferences. Note that the criteria used by EndNote to identify duplicate records won’t always catch all of them. You will still need to look through your Library and delete any records you don’t want. It is probably easiest to do this if you sort your Library by ‘Author’ or ‘Title’. Click on the column header to do this.

Watch video about setting preferences for finding duplicates (< 1 min):