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EndNote: Citing While Writing

An overview of EndNote bibliographic management software with detailed information on getting started and customizing your software.

Cite While You Write

When you install EndNote, an EndNote Toolbar will be installed in your MS Word program.  EndNote calls this option Cite While You Write.  With this you can add citations to your Word document as you write your manuscript.  Using Styles, EndNote will format the citations within the document as well as create the bibliography of cited references at the end of the manuscript.

  1. Have the EndNote library open that contains the citations of interest.  You might want to create a Group that has all the citations you need so it’s easier to locate the required references.
  2. In Word:
    • Open the Word document you are working on or start a new Word document.  
    • Open the EndNote toolbar by clicking on the EndNote tab in Word. 
    • Select the style you wish to use from the dropdown list.  
    • Place the cursor where you need to insert a citation.
    • Click "Insert Citation" and then "Find Citation" to select the citaiton you want to insert.
  3. In EndNote:
    • Select the citation(s) you wish to insert.  
    • Click on “Insert Citation”. You’ll be taken back to Word, where you can resume your work.
  4. In Word, you will notice that your citations and reference list are automatically formatted in whichever style you chose.  If they aren’t, on the EndNote Toolbar just click on “Update Citations and Bibliography” 

Note:  If the dropdown list doesn’t show the journal style you need, choose “Select another style”.  A list of the available output styles will pop up; choose the style you need.  Eventually you’ll want to select this style in the Style Manager, so it appears on your list of favorite styles:  Edit / Output styles / Open style Manager. 

EndNote has over 5000 styles available, but the usual EndNote installation often doesn’t include all of them.  If you’re not finding the style you need, download it from the EndNote Styles site, www.endnote.com/support/enstyles.asp. 

You can easily reformat the paper in a different journal format:  In the Word EndNote toolbar choose the journal style desired from the Style dropdown box.

Submitting the Final Manuscript

You may need to remove the hidden Write While You Cite field codes when you submit the paper to a publisher, or when you just want to share the final paper with a colleague.  Please refer to the User’s Guide for more complete instruction, but basically:

From your saved Word document:
Word 2003:  EndNote 3 toolbar / Remove Field Codes /
Word 2007 & Later:  Convert Citations and Bibliography / Convert to Plain Text

A new document will be created without the hidden field codes.  The original document with the hidden codes will remain, unchanged.  Save the new, plain text document, giving it a different name than the original.  You will want to keep both versions of the document, in case further revisions are needed.