How to: Fix problem where EndNote only shows the EndNote Web toolbar in Word

December 2, 2010

I should probably first state that I’m writing this a few days after I fixed this problem, so I may have some of the details wrong. Apologies if that is the case. Now, on to the problem:

Problem

You have EndNote and Microsoft Word 2010 installed. When loading Microsoft Word the EndNote tab that normally appears has been replaced with a tab labelled EndNote Web. When clicking on this tab you get asked to login to EndNote Web, and cannot access any references you have stored in your local EndNote library.

Solution

The solution to your problem depends exactly how badly things have gone wrong. Try the following steps in order:

Change EndNote Cite-While-You-Write (Cwyw) Settings: Go to the EndNote Web tab in Word and click the Preferences button. Go to the Application tab and look for the Application dropdown. Use this to select EndNote rather than EndNote Web. Once you’ve changed this, restart Word and it should work. However, you may have found that the Application dropdown is greyed out and can’t be changed. If so, go to step 2.
Remove EndNote Cwyw add-in and reinstall: Go to the File menu on the left of the tab bar and select Options and then the Add-Ins option on the left. You should see a list of Active Application Add-ins, in which there will be a number of EndNote related items. To remove these, select COM Add-ins in the dropdown box at the bottom, and then click Go. Select each of the EndNote-related items in the list and click Remove. Repeat this for all other items in the dropdown box so everything related to EndNote has been removed. Now the Cwyw functionality should have been completely removed from Word, so you can now re-enable it. The EndNote X4 Configuration Wizard (accessed through Configure EndNote in the Start Menu) has an option to enable EndNote in Word 2007, but not for Word 2010. Therefore, the only way I have found to re-enable EndNote in Word is to reinstall EndNote. Do that now (but make sure Word is closed first!), and then restart Word and it should work. If not, go to Step 3.
Remove every trace of EndNote from all of Word’s folders and then reinstall: I have found that EndNote seems to hide things away everywhere it possibly can, which makes it very difficult to be sure you’ve removed everything. To make this easier, I would download a copy of the Everything utility and search for "cwyw". You will get a number of results, including folders, .dll files and .dot and .dotm files. Delete all of the .dot and .dotm files. Then reinstall EndNote and, hopefully, everything will work!

If you found this post useful, please consider buying me a coffee.
This post originally appeared on Robin's Blog.

Tagged with:

Categorised as: Computer Help

Russell Rouseff says:

January 14, 2012 at 1:16 am

Thanks your suggestions fixed my problem when no one else on our center had any workable solution.

Maureen says:

January 28, 2012 at 5:17 am

The Endnote Web thing was driving me crazy! Thanks your post. Solved the problem at step 1!

Sarah Fegredo says:

February 23, 2012 at 11:44 pm

I thought you’d saved the day with this solution because I have just created this problem for myself, but when I get to the applications tab the window in which I want to select Endnote and not endnote web is set to the latter but greyed out so I can’t change it. If you have any advice I’d be grateful.
Thanks
Sarah

February 24, 2012 at 4:51 pm

Further to my last comment, I didn’t know if I had my disk to reinstall Endnote so I was unable to uninstall. However, I tried Repairing the installation through the Control Panel/add Programs page. This worked, along with getting the updated version of X4. All seems to be back on track now, except that I don’t have the Endnote Web tab showing in Word. After all the stress it caused, I don’t think I’ll bother.

Thanks for making your knowledge and experience available – yours was the only solution I found.

Edi Aluisius says:

March 22, 2012 at 3:22 am

Thanks heaps buddy. Finally i got the answer. So frustrated to face this problem, because it will apply differently when we are doing ‘edit citations’ in word. Using web endnote, there is no option to do “Insert & Display as: Author (year)” but with dekstop endnote we can do it. I called Thomson Reuters guy but they did not give any solution. Again, thank you very much.

Philip Healy says:

April 29, 2012 at 7:01 pm

I had this problem and followed your advice and removed the add ins. I used Sarah Fegredo’s option of ‘repair’ and everything is working now. Thanks for putting these solutions on the web.

Kate says:

May 25, 2012 at 6:55 pm

Thank you so much. Endnote web was driving me round the bend. You are my hero!!!

muniba ahmad says:

May 29, 2012 at 10:14 am

Thanks alot.I have reinstalled endnote three times due to this problem now it works.

Rachel says:

June 4, 2012 at 4:58 am

Thanks! Worked like a charm!

Frank says:

July 4, 2012 at 2:15 pm

Awesome – many many thanks!
Greetings from Germany,
Frank

cj says:

July 5, 2012 at 5:30 pm

thank you! good lord that was annoying.

Jay says:

September 13, 2012 at 1:00 am

Yes! Rock on PhD student

Zinhle says:

September 14, 2012 at 6:46 am

Thank you very much! You have no idea how frustrated I was!

CL says:

October 10, 2012 at 4:39 am

thank you so much!

PHT says:

October 19, 2012 at 8:49 pm

Thanks for your blog and post. I found that it isn’t necessary to un-install and re-install Endnote X4 to fix this issue. You can just go to Control Panel / Programs and Features (Windows 7) , select “Endnote” and choose the ‘Repair’ option. After I figured this out, I saw that a couple other people had already discovered this and posted comments here! Oh, well, better a late contribution to the discussion than none at all! — PHT

M says:

November 20, 2012 at 7:53 pm

Thank you!

minhaaj says:

November 24, 2012 at 10:45 pm

if’d only read it an hour ago!!! damn endnote!

sem says:

December 14, 2012 at 8:47 pm

I don’t have the EndNote Web issue, but I can not get the option Author (year) to come up in the list (Insert Citation -> Find Citation -> Insert) – I have EndNote X4 (with update), Word 2010, Windows 7. Maybe this is not really available in Endnote X4? Thanks!

sandeep says:

January 16, 2013 at 6:49 am

thanks it saved me from frustration.

Smael says:

January 16, 2013 at 8:52 pm

Merci !! la premiere solution a merchÃ©.

Thx !!

reza says:

February 8, 2013 at 4:49 pm

Thanks a lot bro.. it fixed my great problem.

Lili says:

February 22, 2013 at 2:51 am

Thanks for sharing . I found another way to solve this problem since I tried many times for step 2 and 3 and It failed. Go to Control Panel / Programs and try to find “EndNote Web”, uninstall it. Then go back to step 1 and you may find that Application dropdown works for choosing EndNote! Hope helps other person who suffers from Window 8!

Vic says:

March 12, 2013 at 6:43 am

Thanks so much and God bless you! I have spent hours trying to figure this out and searching all over the web. I am using endnote X6 and repaired the installations of both Word and Endnote several times to no avail only to find it was this “simple” – my issue was solved at step 1. Thanks again friend!

Matthew Gibbons says:

March 22, 2013 at 7:58 pm

Thanks, step one worked without restarting. It is amazing what software companies will do to try and sell new products.

Lak says:

March 27, 2013 at 12:58 pm

Thanks a lot. I was struggling to fix this. Once again thank you very much/

AR says:

April 9, 2013 at 7:02 am

Well done! That stupid problem cost me three hours of working time. Next time: Google problem first, then forget about help manual 😉

Sta says:

April 13, 2013 at 9:16 pm

Thank you.
Your thoughtful consideration and the time you took to post this solution. You solved my problem and I am most appreciative to you for that gift.
Namaste!
Sta

Mike says:

November 12, 2013 at 12:17 am

3 years later your post is still helping people. I had a system that I had (in theory) removed Endnote Web from but the tab refused to go away and nothing I did worked (had tried steps 1 & 2 before I found your post with no luck). I actually solved it at the same time and slightly differently – I tracked down the following two files and renamed them – “EndNote Web Cwyw.dotm” and “EndNote Web Cwyw.dot” – they were located in two places on the computer. Once they were renamed the correct tab showed up. In my case it was for Endnote X6 running on Win7 (64 bit) with Word 2010. Thanks again.

Geoff says:

December 15, 2013 at 11:09 am

Thanks a lot. You quickly solved a problem that I’ve spent hours on!

LiSa says:

February 20, 2014 at 4:47 pm

Thanks a lot! You just made my day!

Saurav says:

March 31, 2014 at 4:40 pm

You are the MAN! I did so many things before hitting this page – Jackpot!
Thanks a TON

Dow Hurst says:

June 22, 2014 at 4:34 am

I can confirm that searching for â€œEndNote Web Cwyw.dotmâ€ and â€œEndNote Web Cwyw.dotâ€ and renaming them will remove the Endnote Web plugin from the MSWord ribbon. I had MSOffice 2010 and Endnote X6. I had uninstalled the Endnote Web plugin before realizing solution 1 was possible. I had repaired Endnote X6 before finding out I had to rename the above files.