Users sometimes contact us to report that they have made a copy of their library, opened it, and found that the Groups have disappeared.

This occurs when a user copies the library, but only copies the .enl file.

Whenever you create a new library in EndNote, EndNote creates an .enl file, and also a DATA folder, which it locates in the same folder as your .enl file.

The DATA folder is very important. It contains information on any Groups that you have set up, it contains the journal title term list (if you use such a list to manage abbreviations of journal titles), any other term lists, and also a folder containing the PDF copies of any articles that you have attached to your references.

So when you copy your library, it is important to copy both the .enl file and the DATA folder.

The easiest was to copy these files is to use the compressed library function.

How to Compress your EndNote Library:

First, open your library. In EndNote X2 and later versions, click on File>Compressed Library>Create. In EndNote X and X1, click on File>Send To>Compressed Library.

EndNote will compress the .enl file and the DATA folder into an .enlx file. Save this file.

To uncompress the .enlx file, first open EndNote. Then click on File>Open and specify the folder where you wish to store the uncompressed files. EndNote will recreate the .enl file and DATA folder for you.