Mendeley Desktop Error: ‘The bound address is already in use’

23 Apr

I’ve recently returned to Mendeley citation manager as it is prefered by collaborators. Everything seemed to install correctly (desktop version, chrome plugin, word plugin) however, I kept getting this error message in the Mendeley Desktop (version 1.19.4):

'There was a problem setting up Word plugin communication: The bound address is already in use'

Re-installing plugins and Mendeley Desktop just wouldn’t seem to fix it and there was little I could find online about fixing this error.

I came across a post somewhere (I can’t seem to find it again) that mentioned there were options to change port settings within the debug console (entered via Ctrl+Shift+D inside Mendeley Desktop)

Debug console accesseed via Ctrl+Shift+D

Inside the Settings tab (below), there is a hidden setting: General_HttpServerPort, which was in my case set to 50001. I suspect this is probably out of range which is giving me the error. I’m not sure why it’s set to 50001.

Change General_HttpServerPort value to 5001 then restart

Changing this value to 5001 and then restarting Mendeley Desktop seems to fix the error and now everything runs as expected!

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2 thoughts on “Mendeley Desktop Error: ‘The bound address is already in use’

  1. I use a MAC and I got mine to work. I followed the method mentioned above but I included one more step In order to get it to work. I did a Ctrl+Shift+D in my word and set the port number to the same as 5001 (previously set in mendeley).

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