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Reference managers

An introductory guide to three common Reference managers - EndNote, Zotero and Mendeley.

Citations in Word

Working with EndNote and Word

To work with EndNote and Word, you must FIRST open your EndNote Library, THEN Word. Select the tab EndNote 21 in Word for the toolbar to appear.

EndNote toolbar in Word

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The referencing style displayed in the Style drop-down menu is usually the style you activated in EndNote 21. If you wish to change the style in EndNote, see the section Formatting (changing) styles in EndNote OR you can select another Style for your Word document using the Style drop-down menu.

Inserting a citation in Word

  1. Make sure the EndNote library that contains the references you wish to cite is open.  
  2. Open a new Microsoft Word document. 
  3. Type one or two sentences (anything will do).  
  4. Select the EndNote 21 tab.

EndNote allows you to insert references in several ways:

Inserting a citation from EndNote 

  1. In Word, select where you would like to insert the citation in the text with the cursor.  
  2. Select Go to EndNote from the EndNote 21 menu options 
  3. In EndNote, highlight the reference and select the Cite icon (quotation mark) to insert the citation(s) in the Word document. 

 Alternatively use the menu options Tools > Cite While You Write > Insert Selected Citation(s).

  1. The reference will be inserted into the text of the Word document and a Reference List or Bibliography will be generated at the end of the document.

Inserting a citation from Word 

  1. Place the cursor where you would like to insert the citation in the text. 
  2. From the EndNote tab in Word, select Insert Citation   
  3. From the pop-up box, select Insert Citation and type an author's last name or keyword 
  4. Select Find and EndNote will list the matching results. 
  5. Select the reference(s) you require and select Insert.  

Reference(s) will be inserted into the text of the Word document and a Reference List or Bibliography will be created at end of the document.

Inserting multiple citations 

Select multiple references from your EndNote library by holding down the Ctrl key while selecting the required references (OR use the Shift key to select a continuous range of references). Then return to your Word document and select Insert Citation > Insert Selected Citation(s).  

Editing a citation in Word

Once you have inserted a citation, you should NOT edit it directly in Word. If you make any changes within the brackets of a citation they will disappear when you update the citations and bibliography.

  1. In Word, select the in-text citation. This will automatically shade the citation in grey. 
  2. Select Edit & Manage Citation(s) on the EndNote toolbar OR right click and select Edit Citation(s). 
  3. From the Formatting drop-down menu, select your chosen option e.g. Exclude Author or Exclude Year. 
  4. Enter page number in the Pages field. Page numbers will only appear if style allows it e.g. APA 7th, Harvard_RMIT_EndNote, etc.

editing EndNote citations in Word

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Tip: If the referencing style you are using is not set up to show information from the Pages box (most of the journal output styles are not) then you add page numbers in the Suffix field, including punctuation e.g. , p. 47 (a space before the comma is necessary).

Removing a citation in Word

Do NOT delete unwanted citations by highlighting them and pressing the delete key.   

If you wish to remove a citation completely: 

If you wish to remove a citation completely: 

  1. Select the citation in-text  
  2. Select Edit & Manage Citation(s) in the Word EndNote toolbar  
  3. The Edit & Manage Citation(s) dialogue box will be displayed. All the citations within the document will be listed.  
  4. Select the Edit Reference dropdown arrow next to the citation you want to delete 
  5. Select Remove Citation.  
  6. Select OK

removing EndNote citations from Word

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Special characters and character sets 

Special characters can be entered into EndNote using any of these text-entry methods:

  • Type the character on the keyboard (if the character is part of the language supported by the keyboard). 
  • Copy the character from another Windows program and paste it into your EndNote library. 
  • Use the Character Map program supplied with Windows. Start > Menu > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Character Map.
Tip: If you edit a reference in EndNote, the changes you make won’t be reflected in your Word document until you update your Bibliography. In Word, select Update Citations and Bibliography. 

Changing a style within Word

EndNote - styles in Word

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If you need to change to another style for your document:

  1. Select the Style box.
  2. Select Another Style from the menu.
  3. To find the style in the alphabetical list, select on the first style, then type the first couple of letters of the style name to jump down the list.
  4. Select the style you wish to activate.
  5. Select OK. Your document automatically reformats to reflect the new style.

EndNote

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Bibliographies

Formatting your bibliography

Changes to the layout (font, line spacing etc.) of in-text citations are handled by Word.

  1. In Word, select the arrow to the right of the Bibliography link.
    EndNote - styles in Word
    Image: Copyright © Microsoft. Used under licence
     
  2. This will default to the Format Bibliography tab.
  3. Select the Layout tab to check or modify settings.
  4. You can change the font size and style of your bibliography.
  5. Give the bibliography a title e.g. Bibliography and highlight the title and select Text Format to make changes to the size and style of the font.
  6. You can change the line spacing between references or alter the hanging indent.
  7. When you have made all required changes, select OK to reformat the bibliography.
    EndNote - format bibliography

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Creating a standalone bibliography

You can create a standalone text only bibliography using the Copy Formatted method:

  1. Open your EndNote library and check you have the appropriate Output Style selected.
  2. Highlight to select the desired references.
  3. From the References menu, choose Copy Formatted Reference (or Ctrl+K) to copy the references.
  4. Open a Word document and Paste the references into Word. This will generate a text document with no EndNote coding. Use the Word options to make any changes to the bibliography.

Common problems with EndNote and Word

Formatted bibliography is permanently shaded

This is field shading. To fix the problem:

  1. Remove field shading by using the Word toolbar, select File > Options.
  2. Select the Advanced tab, scroll down to Show document content > Field shading.
  3. There are three options: choose When selected > OK.

Strange codes in your document

Sometimes, instead of seeing your regular in-text citations, there is a strange code, which looks something like:

ADDIN EN.CITE <EndNote><Cite><Author>Burwell</Author> <Year>2005</Year><RecNum>39</RecNum><record><rec-number>39</rec-number " ...

What you are seeing is the hidden field codes in Word. This is the hidden code EndNote uses to hold the reference information for your formatted citations. To fix this problem:

  1. In Word, go to File > Options.  
  2. In the Advanced tab, scroll down to Show document content > Show field codes instead of their values and uncheck the box.   
  3. Select OK. The document should now appear normal.

This setting is a universal setting for Word, so making this change should fix any documents that are currently displaying field codes.