You don't always have to go to a database's native web interface to locate a reference and then import into EndNote. EndNote allows you to run simple searches directly from within EndNote to locate and import a reference. Here is how. Let's say I need to import this reference from PubMed. I can click on PubMed from the left sidebar under "Online Search". Then in this search form, I am going to put in some information about the article. Just enough information to let it retrieve a unique reference. So it is by this author, published in this year, and the title contains these keywords. I am going to click "Search" up here. And it tells me it found 1 reference. Good. That must be it. Click "OK". And there is my reference. You can also use the Web of Science, if you are on an institutional network with a valid subscription. Like that. For a book record, you can use the Library of Congress catalog. Like that. There are a lot more sources you can search directly from within EndNote. Just click on "more". You can put any of these into your short list on the left. So let's say I want to put Yale Library catalog in the short list. Search for "Yale". Click "Choose". And there it is. Now let's run a search. And here is my reference retrieved from the Yale catalog. Now you may be tempted to do all your importing this way. After all, if we have this, why do we need to learn the multi-step process of importing from any database's native web interface. Well, it is important to know that this method has some disadvantages. First of all, the searches you can run here are not very good subject searches. All it does is literal string match. On the other hand, the native web interface of a database is designed to much better interpret your search query, and return much more relevant results. Second, with this search, by default you don't get to review the search result set before picking the references you want to import. All you get is the number of references it is going to retrieve. And once you click "OK", all of them will be retrieved and imported into your library. If there are records you don't want, you will need to delete them right away. Now that is the behavior of the "Integrated Library and Online Search Mode", which is how EndNote works by default. If you want the opposite, that is, to retrieve online search results and then pick only the ones you want to import, you will need to switch to the "Online Search Mode" only. Up on your toolbar, there is a group of three buttons. If I mouse over them, you can see "Local Library Mode", the "Online Search Mode", and the "Integrated Library and Online Search Mode", which is the default. Now if I switch to the "Online Search Mode", you will see that my local library information disappeared from my sidebar. Now if I do an online search, all the results will be placed to a temporary group called "Online References". Now remember that in this mode, these references have not been placed into your EndNote library yet. They are here for you to review. So I will need to highlight the ones I do want, and then manually copy them to my local library. Now if I switch to my "Local Library Mode", you can see that those three references were indeed copied here. So that's a personal preference. You can either have EndNote automatically import all retrieved references, and then manually delete the ones you don't want, or you can have EndNote show you the retrieved references, manually choose the ones you do want, and then copy them to your library. Most people use the former, because it is easier, and it is the default behavior. I certainly would not recommend switching back and forth between these modes, as it could get pretty confusing down the road. So I would just choose a mode and stick to it. For these very reasons, it is not really a good idea to completely rely on EndNote's own online search function to import references. However, it would be perfect to use this, if you need to import known records one by one, especially if you have the unique identifiers of these references, such as PMIDs. It is much faster than going to PubMed, locating the reference, downloading the file and importing the reference. So let's say I want the reference with this PMID. I can search PubMed, choose "PMID" as my field name, and then type in my PMID. There should be only one reference. And there it is. So the bottom line is: if you need to import known references one by one, use the online search feature here, but if you need to do any kind of meaningful search on a subject or a topic, it is better to go to the database's native search interface, and export your records from there.