Annotating PDFs

Mendeley has several tools to annotate a PDF. To select a PDF, double click on a reference with an attached PDF. You can:

1. Create a sticky note
2. Text select to copy and paste or highlight
3. Highlight text (you can differentiate your highlights with different colours)
4. Use the Notebook feature to easily see information, your annotations and more extensive notes
5. Work on multiple PDFs at once.

Automatically imported PDFs

Use the Watch Folder function to insert any new PDFs automatically into your Mendeley library. To enable:

1. Open Mendeley Desktop
2. Go to +Add references, then Set up watched folder
3. Select a Choose folder to watch.

Note: This feature is only available for Mendeley Desktop.

Creating a Collection

Collections offer a way to organise your references into more manageable groups according to theme, author or topic. Any reference added to a Collection will still appear in All References. To create:

1. Open your Mendeley library
2. Under the heading Collections in the left-hand navigation panel, select Create Collection 
3. To add a reference to a collection, simply drag and drop from All References to your Collection.

Private groups

Share references and documents with other Mendeley users. You can be invited to these groups by email, or you can share a group with others. Private groups also allow you to share PDFs and collaborate using shared annotations.

To invite others to a group:

1. If needed, select create group, or use an existing group from the heading Groups in the left main menu
2. Select the ellipsis next to the group name and then Manage Group
3. Select Invite members and add their emails to send them an email. Up to 100 people can be added.

PDFs opened from a private group will be marked with '(Shared)' in the reading tab. This will help you differentiate between a shared PDF and one from your personal library.

Export your Mendeley library

You can export your library from Mendeley.

1. In Mendeley Desktop, use the Export All option found in the File menu and select from BibTeX, EndNote XML or RIS file formats
2. Select the location on your computer, name the export file, then select save
3. Only the reference information will be exported from Mendeley Reference Manager.

For more information, see the Changing reference managers box to export your library into another reference manager.

Note: This feature is only available for Mendeley Desktop.