Editing Citations in Microsoft Word
Once you have inserted and formatted a citation, you should not edit it directly (even though you are able to do so). Direct edits are lost the next time EndNote formats the bibliography.
You can almost always get EndNote to format your citations exactly to your specifications by editing the style, the EndNote reference, or the citation (as described here).
Note: An easy way to omit the Author or Date from an individual citation is to select the citation, right-click, select Edit Citation(s) and then Exclude Author or Exclude Year.
To edit a formatted citation:
- Click on the citation you wish to change.
- On the EndNote 2025 tab, click Edit & Manage Citation(s). All of the cited references in the document are listed, with the citation you clicked on selected. Each citation will show how it is formatted above the reference(s) for that citation, as a subheading within the list. Click on the Reference tab below the list to see details for the reference. Click on the Edit Citation tab below the list to edit the reference.
- Select the appropriate citation from the list and make any of the following changes to the highlighted citation:
Default Format: Select this menu option to format the citation as defined by the currently selected output style.
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 outside the parentheses for the citation. This feature does not apply when editing a citation in a footnote. When using this option with a numbered in-text style, the author name(s) will appear before the citation.
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.
Show Only in Bibliography: Select this option to display the selected citation only in the bibliography, not in the body of the paper.
Prefix: Enter text here to print at the beginning of the citation text (spaces are significant).
Suffix: Enter text here to print at the end of the citation (spaces are significant).
Pages: Enter page numbers here to show as Cited Pages, formatted according to the selected style. To show, the Cited Pages field must be included in the citation or footnote template of the output style. - Within the Edit & Manage Citations window, you can add or remove citations from a multiple citation or change the order of citations.
Insert Citation: Select this option from the drop-down menu at the right of the citation to add another citation within the same set of delimiters.
Remove Citation: Highlight a citation, then select this option from the drop-down menu at the right of the citation to delete it from the in-text citation.
Up and Down Arrows: Highlight a reference and use the arrows to the left of the citation to change the order of display within the citation. (If a Citation Sort Order is applied by the current output style, using this dialog to change the order of citations in a multiple citation has no effect.) - Click OK to implement your change(s).
On the EndNote 2025 tab, select Update Citations and Bibliography to reformat your bibliography with your changes.