Creating a Bibliography from Multiple Documents
For very large documents, you can use the Microsoft Word's Master Document feature to generate a single bibliography from multiple documents. This allows you to create a cumulative bibliography from any number of book chapters. (As an alternative for smaller documents, we recommend using a single Word document split into Sections. See Creating Multiple Bibliographies in a Single Document.)
Master documents are used to assemble many smaller Word documents at the end of a project to create a single table of contents, bibliography, etc., when a single large document would be difficult to work with. A master document is usually used only for this final assembly, not for working in the individual documents.
Before creating a master document, make a backup of all the documents you will be using for sections. A backup is always advisable before making large changes to any project, and how smoothly this process goes will depend on factors such as how consistent the formatting is for all the subdocuments and the master document. The present author always uses copies of documents when working with a master document and subdocuments.
To generate a single bibliography:
- In each of your documents or chapters, insert your citations to link them to references in an EndNote library.
- In each document, on the EndNote tab, select Convert Citations and Bibliography > Convert to Unformatted Citations.
- Close all of your documents.
- Create a new document.
- Use the Outline view to designate the new document as a master document, then insert and display each of your chapters as subdocuments. (Check Word’s documentation if you need step-by-step instructions.)
Note: If you have collapsed subdocuments to hide their content in Outline view, make sure you expand them in order to display the contents of all subdocuments before continuing.
- On the EndNote tab, in the Bibliography group, click the bottom corner arrow to open the Configure Bibliography dialog.
Note: Your documents must allow read/write access; they cannot be designated Read-only (locked).
- Verify the formatting options and click OK.
EndNote creates the bibliography, using citations from the master document and all displayed subdocuments, and places it at the end of the master document. You can move the bibliography anywhere within the master or subdocuments, and it will remain in that location even when you reformat.
Note: If you select Word’s Insert > File command, and then select the Link option to insert a document into the text, EndNote will not format the linked document when you format the main document. The text from the linked document will be skipped.
If you want to format a bibliography for each subdocument plus a cumulative bibliography at the end of the master document, follow the instructions above, but use an output style that allows formatting of Sections. See Creating Multiple Bibliographies in a Single Document and Sections Options in Output Styles for additional information. In the case of a master document, subdocuments are treated as sections.