How to Cite While You Write with Microsoft Word

The basic steps required to cite a reference and generate a bibliography with Microsoft Word are summarized below.

To Cite While You Write:

1. Open the EndNote library or libraries that contain the references you wish to cite.
2. Start Microsoft Word and open the paper you are writing.
3. When you are ready to cite a source, position the cursor in the text where you would like to put the citation.
4. On the EndNote 2025 tab, click the Insert Citation button. A Find & Insert My References dialog appears. (If you click on the drop-down list arrow at the bottom of this button, you will be given choices beyond finding and inserting citations.)
5. In the text box at the top, enter identifying text for EndNote to locate the appropriate reference. This could be an author’s last name, a year, a keyword, or any other combination of terms found in the reference.
6. Click Find and EndNote compares the identifying text to your EndNote references and then lists the matching reference(s).
7. Identify and highlight the appropriate reference(s).
8. Use the Insert button drop-down to display a menu, and select from:

• Insert: To insert the citation and format it as defined by the currently selected output style. (This would be the same result as simply clicking on the Insert button.)
• Display as: Author (Year): Select this menu option to display both the author name and the year in the highlighted citation, but with the author name appearing to be outside the citation marker.
• Exclude Author: Select this to omit the author name from the formatted citation.
• Exclude Year: Select this to omit the date from the formatted citation.
• Exclude Author & Year: Select this to omit both the author name and the year from an Author-Date formatted citation. This is usually used when you want only page numbers to appear in the citation.
• Show Only in Bibliography: Select this option to display the selected citation only in the bibliography, not in the body of the paper.

1. Go back to step 3 to insert the next citation, and continue citing references this way.

Note: When Instant Formatting is turned on, each time you insert a citation it is formatted and a bibliography is updated at the end of your document. When you are done inserting citations, your document is done! Instant Formatting is turned on by default. See Instant Formatting in Microsoft Word for more information.

1. If your citations are not automatically formatted, and a bibliography is not updated each time you insert a citation, click the Update Citations and Bibliography button on the EndNote 2025 tab.
2. If you want your paper formatted with a different style, select the style you want from the drop-down Style menu. If you do not see the style you want on the list of favorites, click Select another style to see the list of all styles installed on your computer. See Installing Additional Output Styles for information on installing more styles.

Your paper is ready for publication!

If you want to insert figure or table citations, see Inserting and Formatting Figures and Tables.

Related Topics

Finding and Inserting Citations in Word

Finding and Inserting Figures and Tables in Word

Cite While You Write Commands