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EndNote: Organizing Your Library

Groups

Group sets are useful for organizing broad topics within your research. For instance, an ichthyologist might have a group set for salmon and another for trout. Each of these group sets might have groups relating to individual research projects on that type of fish, for instance, salmon and mercury.

  • Have EndNote and your library open.
  • Click on the Groups menu.
  • Click on Create Group Set.
  • Name your group set something that indicates what is in it.

 

Groups are useful for organizing articles and books on the same topic. An article or book can be in multiple groups so organizing your groups can be as simple or complex as you need it to be.

  • Have EndNote and your library open.
  • Click on the Groups menu.
  • Click on Create Group.
  • Name your group set something that indicates what is in it.
  • Your new group will be created within the last group set you were using.
    • If it is in the wrong place, simply select it then drag and drop it into the correct group set.
  • You can create as many groups as you need within a group set.

Smart Groups are useful for organizing individual document records automatically. They work best for very specific criteria such as articles from a specific journal.

Smart groups are tricky to use for topics because:

  • Require specific criteria or you get irrelevant records in your group
  • Too specific criteria will miss relevant records
  • Can't manually add records to a smart group
    • Must manually edit the record to meet the criteria

To create a smart group:

  • Have EndNote and your library open.
  • Click on the Groups menu.
  • Click on Create Smart Group.
  • Name your group set something that indicates what is in it.
  • Set the criteria EndNote will use to put records into the group.
  • Your smart group will automatically search existing records for those that meet your criteria and will search any records you import into your library in the future.
    • This group will continue to update automatically until you delete it.
  • Your new smart group will be created within the last group set you were using.
    • If it is in the wrong place, simply select it then drag and drop it into the correct group set.
  • Records can be in a smart group and in other groups as well so you can include records for articles from a particular journal in a smart group while having them in their regular topic groups as well.

Combine existing groups into combined group using Boolean logic (AND, OR, and NOT).

  • On the Group menu, click on Create from Groups
  • Name your Combined Group Set
  • Select up to 10 groups and smart groups
    • Choose how the groups will be combined using Boolean logic
      • AND will include all records in two or more groups
      • OR will include all records in either of two or more groups
      • NOT will exclude records in a group even if they are in another group

Create a combined group

  • Click Create
  • The Combination Group will appear in your groups panel

Image of a combined group

Edit a Combined Group

  • Select the group that you want to edit
  • From the Groups menu, select Edit Group
  • Edit the group
  • Click Create to finalize the group
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