A preview release of Mendeley Desktop 1.7 is available. This release makes it easier to use custom and 3rd-party citation styles, includes an updated plugin for citing your Mendeley documents in Microsoft Word 2011 for Mac and includes a number of improvements to search.

Citation Styles

• Easier sharing and installation of custom and 3rd-party styles. Go to View → Styles → More Styles → Get More Styles , paste a link to a style in the box and click ‘Download’. You can also drag and drop citation style (CSL) files into the styles dialog.
• We have refreshed the available library of citation styles from the citationstyles.org repository. This adds many new styles.

Updated Mac Word 2011 Plugin

The Mac Word plugin has been updated for Word 2011 on Mac. The updated plugin has a more obvious UI for inserting citations and bibliographies. It is also much faster when refreshing medium to large bibliographies.  Word 2008 is still supported, but it will continue to use the earlier plugin which is accessible from the ‘Script’ menu in Word.

Search

Internal search has been overhauled in this release.  Many of the changes are internal to improve consistency, performance and stability.  There are a number of user-visible changes:

• Search is now incremental across full text and metadata.
• Search is faster and more stable when searching many large PDFs.
• More consistent behavior between full text, document details and citation editor search.
• Search now finds and shows matches for the search keywords in all metadata fields.
• Improved handling of boolean queries (with AND, OR and ‘-’ (NOT) terms).
• Spelling corrections will now include suggestions from the full text as well as document details.

Other Improvements

• The look and organization of the menus and toolbars have been streamlined on Windows and Linux.  The Mac version had a UI overhaul in the previous release, so we thought it was only fair to give a little love to the Windows and Linux versions.
• Improvements to import of RIS files generated by RefMan
• Updated tab-switching shortcuts that are more consistent with web browsers (Chrome, Firefox).
• Improved performance for BibTeX sync and batch metadata edits.  We’ve also fixed a number of causes of UI ‘hiccups’ (sometimes referred to as lag) when using the app.
• Import suggestions. Mendeley Desktop will notice when you tend to import PDFs from the same locations repeatedly and will offer to automatically import other articles from the same folder.

As always, we really appreciate help from early adopters helping us get the next release into shape.  Please download the preview and let us know if you find any issues.  You can report any issues on our support forum .  You can also suggest improvements our UserVoice forum.

For the full list of fixes and improvements, please see the release notes.

Update (30/09/11):  Unfortunately we’ve had a small number of users report a connectivity issue with the Mendeley Desktop v1.1 release on some Windows systems which we did not encounter during testing.  Our developers are working hard on a reliable solution to bring you the best experience possible. A Mendeley Desktop v1.1.1 release resolving the issue will be rolled out sometime in the next few days.  Until then, we’ve removed the v1.1 download from our servers, and encourage you to use the previous Mendeley Desktop v1.0.1 release instead.  We apologize to those of you affected – we will release the fix asap.  Thanks for your patience.

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Mendeley 1.1 is now available. There are several notable improvements to the citation insertion functionality, as well as significant under-the-hood bugfixes and speed + appearance tweaks. You can read the full release notes here.

Highlights

• Mendeley now peacefully co-exists with Track Changes in MS Word.
• Inserting citations and refreshing the document is much faster.
• Watched folders now work much better on the Mac
• Check for Duplicates decisions are now persistent

Interface tweaks include better performance of web content in the desktop client and smaller download/update sizes. Many old UI issues have also been resolved.

Please download and update to Mendeley 1.1 now.

Mendeley Desktop 0.9.9 is now available for Windows, Mac and Linux.  For existing users, you can get it by starting (or restarting) Mendeley Desktop and accepting the update prompt.

Highlights of this release:

• The new citation editor introduced for Word on Windows in the previous release is now also available for users of  OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Word for Mac.  There is no longer a need to go back to Mendeley to select a publication to cite.  Instead you can just click Insert Citation (or press Ctrl + Cmd (⌘) + I on Mac) and type in keywords from the title, authors or publication of the work you wish to cite.





• You can now export the sticky notes on a PDF as an annotation report in PDF format, with or without the content of the article itself.  When viewing a PDF in Mendeley, go to File -> Export PDF with Annotations.



• Sharing PDFs with colleagues is now easier, whether they use Mendeley or not.  Select a document and click the ‘E-mail Documents’ button on the toolbar to send an article via email to one or more people.

In addition, there have been improvements to app startup time, citation formatting, RIS import, EndNote XML import/export and Linux desktop integration, plus bug fixes and stability improvements.

For more details, see the complete list of changes.

If you have a feature, change or bug fix that you particularly want to see soon, please visit our feedback forum and add your votes.

Ubuntu users: Mendeley Desktop 0.9.9 was released for Ubuntu/Debian last week.  Mendeley Desktop 0.9.9.1 has been released today to fix crashes specific to the Ubuntu version that some users encountered when the file organizer was enabled.

Today brings a major new update for Mendeley Web as well as a new Development Preview of Mendeley Desktop. Here’s a short list of some of the improvements: (more…)

This week’s update to Mendeley Web has a some search enhancements that should make it a little easier to find things on Mendeley Web. The main addition is search for groups. Now that we have over 50,000 groups created by people sharing research on a topic with their colleagues, publishing curated lists, or just having a bit of fun, finding groups by invitation or through your contacts’ profiles isn’t quite enough. (more…)

This week we have released a new version of Mendeley with some major updates. The major new feature in Mendeley 0.9.8.1 is public collaborative groups.

What are groups?

Groups are a simple way for you to collaborate with your colleagues to create a shared collection of documents. Groups allow members to put together a list of papers and share notes. There are three types of groups:
(more…)

If you have opened Mendeley Desktop since yesterday, you will have noticed that we have a new major release available and ready for auto-update.

Among the new features and improvements we would like to mention the re-designed Document Details pane on the right-hand side.

Also new to this release is the ability to upgrade your Mendeley account. By upgrading your current free account (which will always be free!) to one of our premium options, you have access to more Web space for your personal and shared collections and the possibility to collaborate with larger groups.

Overall, there have been a lot of improvements made both on the interface and functional level with clearer dialogs and information display. For our Mac users, there have been quite a few UI improvements too and the Cmd+H shortcut properly hides the window!

This release includes a few bug fixes, improvements on existing features such as faster syncing and better sticky notes, and introduces some important new features. The release notes can be seen here.

If you have suggestions for improvements please let us know by visiting the feedback forum. If you encounter any problems using Mendeley or have questions to ask please e-mail support.

Already live via auto-update since last week but we just wanted to let everyone know about this minor update which amongst other things improves the look and feel of the toolbar on Mac. It also addresses several problems with annotation syncing, problems installing the Word plugin on some systems and general stability.

Further user interface improvements are planned for the next release so rest assured that this is just the beginning. Here is the complete list of changes for this release:

• (Mac) Improved the look and feel of the toolbar on Mac.

• (Windows) Fixed ‘Invalid procedure call’ error when working with some Word documents which contain Mendeley-generated citations.
• Fixed several sporadic crashes related to the search and de-duplication features.
• Fixed several sync errors which could occur when syncing annotations.
• Fixed several crashes related to the Word/OpenOffice/Mac Word plugins.
• Fixed several crashes related to the notification bar.
• Fixed several crashes related to importing PDFs which are already in your library.
• Fixed annotation creation times being displayed incorrectly in timezones outside of GMT.
• Fixed sticky notes not being exported correctly via File -> Export with annotations.
• Added a limit to the number of citations that are extracted from a single PDF and reduce the number of citations extracted with poor-quality metadata.
• Reduced memory usage when handling large file attachments.
• Fixed ‘LinkToMendeleyVba2.dll not found’ message on some Windows PCs.
• Made database updates safer when installing new versions of Mendeley Desktop.
• Fixed the problem where Document Details hide/show toggle in menu did not always work correctly.
• Fixed sticky notes not being restored when restoring backups.
• Fixed annotation syncing problems when file organizer is enabled
• Fix a freeze during the ‘Downloading files’ syncing step.
• Preserve author ordering correctly when importing from Zotero.
• (Mac) Fixed crash when entering accented characters (eg. umlauts) in authors field in Document Details tab.
• (Mac) Included more detailed information in crash reports sent from Mendeley Desktop.
• (Mac) Fixed crash when importing some corrupted PDFs.
• (Mac) Experimental support for international versions of Microsoft Word for Mac.
• (Linux) Fixed README file being installed to /usr in Ubuntu version.

If you have suggestions for improvements please let us know by visiting the feedback forum at http://feedback.mendeley.com. If you encounter any problems using Mendeley or have questions to ask please e-mail support.

We’re happy to announce several new features and important upgrades in this latest release. The most important ones are:

Bibliography generator plugin for Microsoft Word 2008 for Mac:

This has been one of the most frequently requested features by our Mac users – now it’s here! Therefore, bibliography creation is now supported in Word and OpenOffice on all three platforms (Win, Mac and Linux). It’s just the first iteration, so we’ll continue to work on it and add more functionality. Please let us know what you think at http://feedback.mendeley.com.

Collaborative PDF annotation using sticky notes and highlights:

This has been a repeated request by research groups, labs and departments using Mendeley. PDF sticky notes and highlights are now synced with Mendeley Web, meaning that in Shared Collections you can now see each of your colleagues’ annotations separately and color-coded. In addition, there’s a major upgrade to the PDF viewer – it will now render the displayed PDF document instantly, no more pre-caching!

XMP metadata now extracted from PDFs:

This is a behind-the-scenes upgrade – Mendeley will now read embedded XMP metadata from PDFs where available (Nature and Elsevier journals, among others, now provide this routinely), boosting the metadata extraction quality. Even where there is no embedded XMP metadata, the algorithms for detecting authors and titles have also been improved.

Because of necessary changes to our server architecture, older Mendeley Desktop versions are required to upgrade to this latest beta version to continue using Mendeley’s online features – we’ll try not to make a habit of doing this.

Here is the full list of improvements and bug fixes:

• PDF annotations are now synchronized with Mendeley Web. In shared collections multiple users can add notes or highlights to documents.
• Added an importer for Ovid Reprints/Medlars format files.
• PDF import will make use of embedded XMP metadata if it is present and appears to be accurate.
• (Mac) First version of Mac Word plugin. Please note: Currently the Mac Word plugin supports Microsoft Word 2008 for Mac. Word 2004 and earlier are not yet supported.

• Added keyboard shortcuts for selecting, highlighting and adding notes.
• Newly imported documents are highlighted after import.
• The updater will now ask for the administrator password if necessary during update installation on Linux and Mac.
• Added ‘Copy LaTeX Citation’ action to documents list right-click menu.
• Improvements to accuracy of automated author and title extraction from PDFs.
• Add the ability to drag-and-drop any file type into Mendeley Desktop. If the file type is not supported by one of the importers then a new document is created with the file attached.
• Smoother scrolling in PDF viewer.
• ‘Search by Title’ and DOI lookups will now retain the full names of authors if the lookup comes back with only initials if the initials and the full names agree.

• Fixed a recent problem with links between new documents and file attachments being lost for some users when syncing and a message warning that recently synced documents had been deleted on Mendeley Web.
• Fixed crashes when exiting full-screen mode in PDF viewer.
• Fixed red border around PDF content on PowerPC Macs.
• Fixed local library data not being migrated correctly when changing email address in Mendeley Desktop.
• Added additional verification of backups before restoring to web in the ‘Restore Backup’ feature.
• File space usage shown in Preferences dialog did not update after syncing.
• Incorrect progress messages were shown in the status bar when importing a PDF.
• Fixed problem where starting a ‘Search by Title’ lookup for one document and then switching to another document before the results came back would apply the changes to the wrong document.
• Fixed crash when performing DOI lookups in ‘Add New Document’ dialog.
• The PDF viewer no longer creates temporary copies of opened PDF files on disk.
• Fixed problem where only the first page of certain multi-page PDFs were shown in the viewer.
• Fixed problem where search in a PDF viewer tab would not find matches on the last page of the PDF.
• Fixed file organiser renaming failing on Windows for documents where the title, authors or publication name contained double quotes.
• If uploading a file to Mendeley Web fails because the file is too large, the sync now continues uploading other attachments.
• Fixed a problem which could cause Mendeley Desktop to loop continuously during sync.
• Fixed PARSEFAILED error when syncing if certain characters appeared in imported documents.
• Fixed long delay when opening the citation style browser.
• Fixed long delay when opening the Tools -> Options menu on some systems.
• Fixed incorrect documents being shown when searching for certain tags.
• Fixed error about LinkToMendeleyVba.dll not being found on some Windows systems.
• Fixed various crashes when syncing after removing shared collections on the web.

If you have suggestions for improvements please let us know by visiting the feedback forum at http://feedback.mendeley.com. If you encounter any problems using Mendeley or have questions to ask please e-mail support@mendeley.com. Thanks!

The main priority is still to polish existing features by fixing a lot of usability issues and bugs. We also continue working on speed and stability and rest assured – work on the Mac Word Plugin has now officially been started. We’ll let you know as soon as we have an alpha version ready for testing.

Improvements to Existing Features:

• Improved concurrent editing of documents by multiple users. Tags and keywords changes are now merged correctly and conflict resolution is improved.
• Add support for disambiguating citations in Word and OpenOffice.
• Improve the performance of bibliography generation and citation insertion in Word and OpenOffice.
• Mendeley Desktop can now import PDF, BibTeX and RIS files which do not have the .pdf, .bib or .ris file extension. Mendeley Desktop will attempt to guess the type of the file in this case.
• Support for importing .txt files which may contain references in various formats.
• Support importing of month field from BibTeX where month name is not enclosed in quotes or braces.
• HTML attachments are now indexed for full text search (note that this will not apply to existing attachments).
• Show a wizard on first run offering to set up word processor integration.
• Clearer formatting of dates in the table view.
• Add support for superscript and subscript formatting of in-line citations.
• Add a menu item to toggle the visiblity of the right-hand Document Details pane.
• Support for additional fields and document types in BibTeX import and export.
• Support for additional document types in RIS import and export.
• Show different icons in the table view depending on the file type, number of files attached to a document and whether the file is stored locally or downloadable from the web.
• Automatically enable the ‘Citation Key’ field in the Document Details pane when BibTeX syncing is enabled.
• Support for importing file links from EndNote XML files (currently tested with EndNote X2, X3 XML files).
• Add keyboard shortcuts for moving between tabs, creating folders and toggling the Document Details pane.
• Clearer messages in the Word and OpenOffice.org plugins.
• When importing PDFs through the ‘Watched Folders’ feature, the existing library is searched for duplicates of imported documents.
• Improved performance of first PDF import after starting Mendeley.
• (Mac) Mendeley Desktop offered to install the NeoOffice plugin even when NeoOffice was not installed.
• (Linux) Add a README file to the generic Linux version of Mendeley Desktop.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed various hangs and crashes on exit when background services (such as the file organiser) were enabled.
• The location of the Zotero database was not auto-detected if Firefox was not using the default profile.
• Hyperlinks in PDF documents did not work reliably.
• Fix crash when opening certain invalid PDF documents.
• Removed non-working support for unchecking sub-folders of a watched folder.
• Import documents directly into the ‘My Publications’ collection did not work.
• Progress of syncing operations is now shown as a percentage instead of number of documents and citations updated.
• Fix a bug where document addition date/times were stored in local time internally and would be incorrect after a timezone or daylight savings change.
• The document type combo-box now updates correctly after a DOI/Arxiv/PubMed lookup.
• Improved syncing performance.
• ‘Copy LaTeX Citation’ menu command now generates a citation key for the selected document(s) if necessary.
• Application interface could hang whilst performing a database upgrade or repair.
• Search index could go out of date causing documents which should match the search keywords not to be found.
• Search did not always find all relevant full text matches.
• Auto-update checks did not work properly in release candidate versions.
• (Mac) The account password field was cleared when opening the preferences dialog.

Feedback and Support

If you have suggestions for improvements please let us know by visiting the feedback forum at http://feedback.mendeley.com. If you encounter any problems using Mendeley or have questions to ask please email support@mendeley.com.