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Microsoft Word and EndNote

Insert and edit citations

EndNote allows you to work with Word to insert citations and references from your EndNote Library into your Word document. This feature is called Cite While You Write (CWYW).

You can format the document with a reference style of your choice as well as edit citations if needed.

Insert citations

This video will guide you through the process of inserting citations into a Word document:

To insert an in-text citation:

  1. Open your document in Word and enter some text. Leave the cursor flashing where you would like the citation to appear.
  2. Click the EndNote tab at the top of the screen.
  3. Click "Go to EndNote" to switch to the EndNote library you have open.
  4. Select the reference you want (hold “Ctrl” or “Cmd” while clicking if you want to select more than one reference).
  5. Click the Insert Citation button (which looks like quotation marks), or go to: Tools — Cite While You Write — Insert Selected Citation(s).
  6. The citations will appear in your Word document where the cursor was, and a corresponding reference will be added to the bibliography at the end of the document.

As you add more citations within your text, the bibliography will continue to update according to the style you are using (ie new references will be added in alphabetical or numerical order, depending on the reference style)

Edit citations

You can edit citations to make them display in different ways. For example, you could add a page number, or display the author’s name outside the brackets so that it forms part of the sentence.

This video will guide you through the process of editing in-text citations:

To edit citations:

  1. In Word, click once on the in-text citation.
  2. Click on the EndNote tab.
  3. In the toolbar, click on “Edit & Manage Citation(s)”.

You now have the option to:

  • remove a citation
  • change the order of citations where multiple citations are inserted at the same point
  • exclude the author name or the year from the citation eg display the citation as Author (year) instead of (Author, year)
  • add a prefix, suffix or page numbers to a citation.