Hello. Does anyone know how to use endnote with scrivener please? I’ve edited “preferences” so that endnote is now my bibliography manager - but what command do I use actually to insert a reference, please? I’m sure I’m just being thick but I’ve spent most of the afternoon fiddling with endnote and scrivener and watching training videos without any success in finding it. I was hoping scrivener would help me STOP “cat vacuuming” rather than enabling it! 
There is a very helpful and informative post on this forum at [url]https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/happy-about-using-w-endnote-now-that-i-know-how/13540/1], describing in detail one user’s workflow for this, which should give you a very good idea of how to use Endnote with Scrivener. It was written with regard to Scrivener for Windows, but the principle is the same for the Mac version.
You may also be interested in this user video, showing Scrivener in action with EndNote, along with some other applications, in academic work: [url]https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/scrivener-user-videos/7706/1].
I hope this helps.
All the best,
Astrid
Thanks Astrid, but I’m afraid that’s the video I’ve already viewed and (a) I can’t hear what he’s saying at all clearly and (b) he doesn’t seem to mention the actual commands he’s using so I’m afraid I found it worse than useless, personally - I was hoping someone else might have made one that’s a bit clearer. The workflow description was more useful, thanks, so I’ll go away and work through that (Although - “toggle”? I’m afraid I need something a bit more “press command and v” - but then I only just found out this weekend how to right-click on a mac 
so you can tell I’m not a sophisticated mac user!)
No, sorry, that’s worse than useless - all it’s telling me to do is use cut and paste! Why would I need Scrivener OR Endnote for that??? Does Scrivener not support “cite while you write”? If not, then it looks as if Word is a better option for writing longform academic work, which is disappointing to say the least. Surely there must be some way of inserting your references from Endnote without having to cut-and-paste them and then reformat them at the compile stage??? Help!!!
Hi again,
The benefits of writing long-form texts in Scrivener rather than Word are numerous (such as being able to write in small chunks, to store related materials in the same project, to use extensive meta-data including keywords and various sorts of notes, to restructure your work using the corkboard or outliner, and many more). Scrivener doesn’t support “cite while you write” because EndNote does not have a plug-in that would enable this and we are too small a company to have the resources to develop such a plug-in ourselves at this stage. But using citation placeholders in your text, then compiling your output to a word processor and scanning the citation placeholders there, is actually a very quick and efficient way of working. Certainly, that is what I have found in my own work.
I don’t have EndNote myself, but I do use Bookends, so if I describe that process I hope it will demonstrate the value of the process in general. (If you are using a Mac and you’re not already financially committed to EndNote, it is well worth looking at both Bookends and Sente, each of which has fervent supporters, as a search of this forum will demonstrate, and each of which offers a free trial.) This process saved me untold hours of effort in the course of a recent-ish academic degree. I don’t see how “cite while you write” functionality could have enhanced the experience.
When I am writing in Scrivener and want to add a reference, I use Format > Bibilography/Citations (or its shortcut Cmd-Y) to open the bibliography management application, then find the entry I want (or enter it if it is new), and drag it into position in my Scrivener document. A citation placeholder is added to the Scrivener document, which looks something like this:
{Forstater, 2007, Economics, #44152}The “#44152” bit is the unique reference identifier in the Bookends database. At this stage, I can add whatever modifiers are necessary to indicate page numbers or to show that the reference is to appear in the bibliography but not as a specific citation in its current location, and so on (following the instructions in the Bookends manual). When I come to the end of the writing process, I compile the output to RTF, then open it in my preferred word processor (I usually use Mellel for this sort of work because it is very well integrated with Bookends, but you could use Nisus Writer Pro or Microsoft Word). I scan the references, and the citations and bibliography are created for me automatically, in line with the formatting rules I have set up in Bookends. The scan itself is quick and easy – it requires no effort at all from me, because the format is already set up in Bookends, and it takes just seconds. If I change the formatting rules, all I have to do is unscan the document and re-scan it to regenerate my references in the new format.
So, as you can see, I have found the use of citation placeholders to be very straightforward and easy in practice. It sounds a bit convoluted, but it really is as simple as opening the bibliography application (Cmd-Y), dragging a reference into Scrivener, optionally adding modifiers to the placeholder text, compiling to RTF, opening in a suitable word processor, then scanning the document to apply the formats that you have set up in your bibliography application. (Different combinations of word processor and bibliography application may require different actions at the scanning stage, so you would need to consult the manual for your chosen bibliography application to verify what is needed.)
I’m wary of bombarding you with unwanted links, but if you do a search on the forum for “cite while you write” or “bibliography” or “citation”, you will find plenty of threads discussing the ins and outs of the placeholder-and-scan approach. One thread in particular might be of interest to you: <https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/how-to-use-bibliography-and-references/12627/1 It’s very long, but it starts off as a general discussion, moves onto the topic of integrating with Zotero (some of the comments are relevant to your choice of application, as well), then ends up with a discussion of “cite while you write”. Don’t feel you have to read it! I’m only mentioning it in case you would like a little more background information.
Have you tried dragging some references from EndNote into Scrivener yet, then compiling your output to RTF and scanning it in Word? If not, it would be well worth doing a small test run so that you can get a feel for what it means in practice. See how you get on with it – do shout if you have any difficulties, and we’ll try to help resolve them.
All the best,
Astrid
Having written a 560 page book using Word, and a text of about 100,000 words using Scrivener and Nisus Writer Pro, I certainly don’t take the view that Word is better for long academic works – quite the reverse. I wouldn’t dream of using anything but Scrivener for such work, and the longer and more complex the text, the more I would see Scrivener as being indispensable. Personally, I do not look on the lack of “Cite While You Write” as a disadvantage. I never liked it, and even when I wrote in Word I did not use it, far preferring to compile the bibliography at the last minute as a separate operation. That is a personal preference, of course, but there are numerous frequenters of these forums who use Scrivener for academic work, some with Endnote, others with Bookends or Sente, or even Zotero, and they all seem to find the combination perfectly workable. In my case, it is simply a matter of hitting Cmd-Y, which swaps me to Sente, finding the reference I want and selecting it, then hitting Cmd-Y again. That gives me a temporary citation of the kind {Author year} – in many cases I can type the reference directly without going to Sente because I can remember the reference. The finished document gets scanned by Sente, which inserts the finished citations and bibliography. It’s all fairly straightforward.
Martin.
… or BibDesk, my preferred one.
Paolo
In my experience, Word encourages – and rewards – a focus on the mechanics of producing a manuscript: page layout, citation placement and format, and so forth. All of which are essential tasks, but don’t really have much to do with writing.
Philosophically, Scrivener is a writing tool, not a formatting and page layout tool. I’m sorry you don’t see how that approach would be helpful in your work.
Katherine
I wrote my doctoral thesis in Scrivener, using EndNote, and it worked brilliantly. The simplest way to enter a reference in Scrivener is to press Cmd-Y (to open EndNote), search for and select the relevant citation in EndNote, click (and hold) and drag it into Scrivener (and then release). While that is the simplest, the easiest way is to press Cmd-Y, select the reference(s) you want in EndNote, press Cmd-C (for copy), switch to Scrivener (using Cmd-Tab) and once the cursor is in the right place press Cmd-V (for paste). This will insert text surrounded by curly brackets {author, date, code}. When you later compile the document to Word, you can then convert these to properly formatted citations using the Academic style of your choice (I needed to use APA Style for my thesis).
Text like this*
will end up like this (using APA Style)
Note that, even if you were to write your entire paper/thesis/textbook in Word, you are better leaving the conversion to properly formatted citations until the very end. I strongly recommend avoiding CWYW, at least if you want to avoid headaches and complications. I have used CWYW in the past, but I was never going to let it close to my thesis.
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Thank you so much, nom - THAT was what I needed, the commands for how to insert the reference into scrivener. You rule!
You’re welcome. 