Restricting Searches to Specific Fields

Use the Field list on the Advanced Search panel to narrow your search to a specific field. You can select Any Field to look for your search terms in any of the fields in your references.

For example, to find references published in 2013, restrict the search to the Year field to avoid finding entries that include 2013 in the abstract, title, or elsewhere.

The field names in the Field list are EndNote’s "generic" field names. For example, Author represents Reporter, Editor, Artist, or any other variations of the Author field used in the different reference types. See The Generic Reference Type for a complete list of generic field names. To find the generic name that matches a field for a specific reference type, select that reference type from the List of Reference Types or by selecting it from the Modify Reference Types dialog.

To access the Modify Reference Types dialog:

  1. From the Edit menu, select Preferences.
  2. Click the Reference Types option in the list of preferences.
  3. Click the Modify Reference Types button and the Modify Reference Types dialog will open.

EndNote can import references from hundreds of sources, each of which uses its own set of field names. Once you have transferred references into EndNote, you will search for information by using the destination EndNote generic field names, and not the original field names from the information provider. For example, the PMID number, when importing data from PubMed, typically transfers into the Accession Number field in EndNote. To search for a specific PMID in EndNote, search the Accession Number field.

Searching Fields and PDF Files

You can search all fields, the attached PDF files, and added PDF notes in your selected Reference List.

  1. Select the Any Field + PDF with Notes option from the Field list.
  2. Select an item from the Comparison list to indicate how the search term(s) should relate to the search.
  3. Enter the search term(s) that you want to locate.
  4. Click the Search button.

The following rules apply when you select the PDF option or the Any Field + PDF with Notes from the Field list.

  • By default, EndNote ignores capitalization when searching for text. For example, a search for the term hospital also finds Hospital.
  • If you enter a phrase, EndNote retrieves references that contain the words you entered in any field or in a PDF file. The words appear together if they are in any EndNote field or any PDF file. For example the query, hospital care retrieves references containing the term "hospital care" in either a field or a PDF file.
  • When using the Advanced Search panel, EndNote searches quotation marks (" ") as characters when you select a specific field, the PDF option, or the Any Field + PDF with Notes option. For example, the query “poured cold water” only retrieves references that contain the phrase showing within a set of quotation marks somewhere in the reference, a linked PDF file, or within a Sticky Note. The phrase without quotation marks would be ignored in Advanced Search.
Rules for Single Word Searching

When searching for a single word in any field using the Contains comparison operator, EndNote applies both left- and right-hand truncation. For example, the term plant finds:

Plant
plant
plant classification
planter
"plant"
transplant