The EndNote tab in Word
When you install EndNote, a tab will be created in Microsoft Word that allows Word and EndNote to interact. This tab can also be created in Pages for Mac, OpenOffice and Google Docs (if you have EndNote 21).
If you don't see the tab option in Word after downloading EndNote, have a look at our troubleshooting page for ways to install it. This is what it looks like in Windows (it is very similar on a Mac):
We'll go through the most important aspects of the tab below.
Styles
The referencing style that is going to be applied to your document is listed in the Styles area in the middle of the toolbar
The list of styles available from the drop down should match your list of favourite styles in EndNote. It is easy to change styles by using the drop down menu and either choosing one of the other styles available, or choosing Select Another Style to find more options. This works even if your document already has inserted EndNote references in it - they will be automatically be changed to the new style.
Insert Citation
The Insert Citation option on the left of the toolbar allows you to add references into Word. The Insert Citation icon has two parts: an upper part (with an image of a magnifying glass) and a lower part (with the words Insert Citation).
Clicking on the upper (magnifying glass) part brings up a search window that allows you to search your EndNote library to find a reference. These can then be selected and inserted to wherever the cursor is in your document.
Clicking on the lower (Insert Citation) part shows a drop-down menu, allowing you to place a reference you have selected in your EndNote library straight into the Word document using Insert Selected Citation(s). You can select multiple references in your library by holding down the Control key (Command key on a Mac) while you select them.
When instant formatting is On (see the Instant Formatting section below), inserted references will be grey when you click on them, and so will entries in the reference list. This indicates that there are hidden field codes behind the visible text. You cannot edit this grey text - if you try, your document will eventually revert back and cancel your edits. To edit (or remove) your in-text references, see the Edit & Manage Citation(s) section below. To edit a reference in your reference list, return to your EndNote library and edit it there. Then return to Word and click on the Update Citations and Bibliography option in the tab to implement your changes.
Edit & Manage Citations
Edit & Manage Citations allows you to add page numbers to your in-text citations, change the way they display in your writing, and apply suffixes and prefixes. You can also remove citations from your document in this mode.
If you select an in-text citation in your document and choose Edit & Manage Citations, a window will open (see pic below):
Under the Citation heading the in-text citations in your document are displayed in order. The name of the EndNote library where the citations are located should appear next to each citation. You may notice instead, next to some citations, the location "Traveling Library". This is covered lower down on this page under the Travelling LIbrary heading.
The Edit Reference drop down to the right allows you to remove an in-text citation (choose Remove and then OK at the bottom of the window).
Edit Citation allows you to change the look of an in-text citation that has been selected above You can add a prefix, such as (see also Smith, 2020) or page numbers (Smith, 2020, p. 57), or both. Note that when you type text into the Prefix box you must put a space at the end of your text. Just type numbers into the Pages box, eg 57, or 57-58. You don't need to type p or pp.
The Formatting drop down menu lets you:
- Default displays the whole citation within parentheses: (Smith, 2020)
- Display as: Author (Year) puts the author(s) outside and in front of the parentheses: Smith (2020)
- Exclude Author hides the author: (2020). You would use this option if you had already typed the author's name before inserting the citation.
Instant Formatting
To the right of the styles area is a drop down called Instant Formatting
When Instant Formatting is set to On, any reference that is inserted will be automatically formatted into your chosen style. When Instant Formatting is set to Off, references inserted into Word will appear in unformatted style, enclosed in curly braces with a hash plus the record number after the year of publication.
You'll normally want formatting set to On because instant formatting is very convenient. An exception to this would be if your Word document is very large and contains a large number of references. In this case you may find that your Word document lags, in which case turning off the instant formatting will improve the performance of the software.
When Instant Formatting is set to Off, your references will be inserted in unformatted style, and no reference list entry will be created. Don't panic when this happens, you can restore your unformatted references to their formatted state, and add them to the reference list, by pressing the Update Citations and Bibliography button.
Tip: you can add page numbers to an unformatted citation by typing @ plus the page numbers directly after the record number of the unformatted citation. For example, {Algahtani, 2020 #82@26} or {Algahtani, 2020 #82@26-27}. When they are formatted, these will become (for example in APA 7th style) (Algahtani, 2020, p. 26) and (Algahtani, 2020, pp. 26-27).
Changing the Layout of your Reference List
Normally, EndNote will format your reference list using the same font, font size and line spacing as the rest of your document. However, if you wish, you can change any of these.
Click on the small arrow icon in the bottom right of the Bibliography section of the EndNote tab in Word, or clicking on the Confgure Bibliography button in Word for Mac:
The Configure Bibliography window will appear. Click on the Layout tab:
You can now change the font and font size of the reference list, add in a title, change the indenting of the list, adjust line spacing (including spacing between the lines of each reference), or adjust the spacing after each reference (but not the spacing between the lines of each reference).
Traveling Library
Sometimes you will have citations in your document that were inserted from an EndNote library that is different to the one currently open, or which were inserted some time ago and have since been deleted from your library. These will appear in the Edit & Manage Citations window as belonging to a Traveling Library.
This is normally fine - the Word document has stored all the referencing information about the citation in the field codes which are hidden behind the formatted text, from when it was originally inserted. Problems only arise when you unformat your document (see Merging Chapters of a Thesis, below). When you unformat a document, any stored information in the field codes about these traveling library citations is lost, so that when you try to reformat the document you will get error messages like the one below:
Below the red text, you will often see some suggested references: EndNote is trying to find possible matches for this traveling library reference in your library.
To replace traveling library references with references from your EndNote library:
- Select a traveling library reference in your Edit & Manage Citations window, and click on the drop down menu on its right. Select Update from My Library. This will produce the red error text seen above. Check to see if one of the suggested references is the one you need - if so, select it and then click on the Insert button at the bottom of the window. This will replace the traveling library reference with the reference from your library. If none of the suggestions match what you need, or if there are no suggestions, click on the Cancel button.
- Repeat this for all the traveling library references in the document, one by one.
- For any left over travelling library references you couldn't match, you can use Export to EndNote>Export Travelling Library on PC or Tools>Export Travelling LIbrary on a Mac. This will add all the remaining traveling library references to your library.
- The references added to the library will have different record numbers to the ones in your document, which means that when you reformat your document you will still get the red error message for each of the old traveling library references. However, the error window will now have the correct reference as a suggestion in every case, and you should select this and Insert it.
Making a Plain Text Version of your Document
As has been noted above, you cannot directly edit in-text references that have been inserted using EndNote, or their reference list entries. This text will have grey shading if you click on it.
Normally, to edit an in-text citation, you would use the Edit & Manage Citations option. To edit an entry in your reference list, you would edit that reference in your EndNote library and then use Update Citations and Bibliography in the EndNote tab in Word.
However, sometimes EndNote and Word will not be able to make the text of a reference look exactly as you want it to. When this happens you can create a Plain Text copy of your document. To tdo this go to the EndNote toolbar in Word and select Convert Citations and Bibliography > Convert to Plain Text. This creates a copy of your document without any EndNote field codes in it. This document, and the references within it can be edited like any other text.
Plain text copies are also used for submitting articles for publication in academic journals.
It is best to create a plain text copy as the last thing you do before submitting the document for publication. In particular, make sure you have inserted all the EndNote citations that need to be in the document before creating the plain text copy.
A problem arises if, after creating your plain text copy, you need to insert more EndNote citations. This cannot be done with the plain text copy. You must return to your saved original which contains the field codes, insert any new citations using EndNote, and then create a new plain text copy.
Merging Chapters in a Thesis
If you are writing a thesis or some other long document, you will often have one Word file for each chapter. And, if you have inserted citations using EndNote, each of these chapters will have its own reference list at the end.
If you want to merge these chapters together so that there is only one reference list at the end you will need to follow these steps:
- Save a backup copy of each of the formatted chapters, including any appendices that have EndNote references in them.
- Then for these backup files, unformat each of the chapters & appendices using Convert Citations and Bibliography > Convert to Unformatted Citations. This changes all the in-text citations to unformatted style (see Instant Formatting, above) and removes all the reference lists.
- Create a new, blank Word document.
- In order from the start of the thesis to the last chapter, copy and paste each of the unformatted chapters into this new document, one after the other. You can add page or section breaks between the chapters if you wish. At this stage, don't paste any sections such as appendices that you want to appear after the reference list.
- Once all the unformatted chapters are merged together into one document, select Update Citations and Bibliography. This will format all the in-text citations and create a reference list at the end of your document.
At this point, you might see some of the error windows mentioned in the Traveling Library section of this guide, above. Follow the processes outlined in that section to sort out these error windows.
- Now, paste any remaining unformatted sections, like appendices, which you want to appear after the reference list. You would normally have a page or section break in your document between the reference list and the following sections.
- Again, select Update Citations and Bibliography, and deal with any further error windows as before.
- You are now finished, and can save your merged document. You may still need to do some word processing on it, for example adding title, abstract and table of contents.