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Medline Guided Exercise: 9. Saving and Sharing Search History

9. Using your Search and Results

 

To save search history and set up alerts, create an account with Ovid.  You will need to provide your own one-word username and password.  

Note: the password must be greater than have more than 6 letters or numbers and should not include special characters.

While you do not need an account to search Ovid; it is advisable to login to view your saved searches.

Your search results can be printed, emailed or directly exported to citation management software (such as Mendeley, Refworks, Endnote or Zotero) or to knowledge synthesis tools such as Covidence

Step by Step: Using the Results of Your Search

Save your Search

  1. You will need a Personal Account to save your search (see Sign up for Personal Account below)
  2. Beneath your Search History, Click the Save All button
    • Enter a Search Name
    • Comment (Optional)
    • Save
  3. ​​​​​​​Your Search History has been saved
To re-run your saved search
  1. Click View Saved to review your Saved Searches
  2. Select the search and click on Run

Sign up for Personal Account

To Save searches in Medline, you'll need to create a personal account with Ovid.

Steps:
  1. Click the My Account tab
  2. Click Create Account
  3. Complete the Personal Account form using
    • one word for your login name (Note: do not use your CWL)
    • an alphanumeric password with no special characters
 
Video Demo: Medline - Saving your Search Results

Exporting Results

To export citations to a citation management tool
  1. Check the box next to the items in your search results that you would like to Export
  2. Use the Format dropdown menu to Select the format of the export (Refworks is the default format)
  3. In the Fields dropdown menu Select Complete Reference
  4. Click Export
NOTE: Select All for bulk download, up to 999 results. Use the Ranges to do the export in stages, if results exceed 1000. E.g. 1-999, 1000-1999 etc.
 
Video Demo: Medline - Exporting Search Results

Sharing Your Search

At times you may wish to share your search with your supervisor, research team, or with your librarian prior to a consult.

You can share your Search History directly from Medline. 

Choose from:

  • Emailing your search results
  • Copying your search results to the Clipboard

Saving your Search and Results

  1. Create an Account with Ovid
    • Go back to the Search page
    • Save your search strategy
  2. Export all, or a few, results to a citation management tool [Note: use RIS format to export to Mendeley or Covidence].