Removing Field Codes
You may need to remove Cite While You Write field codes in order to share your document with a publisher or colleague. See Field Codes in Microsoft Word for information on field codes.
- If your colleague is using the same version of Word that you are, you can share your formatted document as is; the document includes a Traveling Library, which includes all required information for the formatted citations and bibliography. See The Traveling Library.
- If your colleague is using a different word processor or an incompatible version of Word, you could remove field codes to share your final document. However, removing field codes saves the formatted citations and bibliography as text, and does not allow reformatting.
- Removing field codes means deleting Word’s Cite While You Write field codes and saving the formatted citations and bibliography as text. This removes only Cite While You Write field codes, and not all other Word field codes.
- When field codes are removed, in-text figure citations are no longer linked to an EndNote reference or to the figure list. In-text figure citations become plain text. Pictures in the figure list become picture files, as though they were copied and pasted into the document.
- Because EndNote and Cite While You Write cannot reformat or unformat your paper once field codes are removed, the Convert to Plain Text command makes a copy of your document without codes.
Note: If you are working with master and subdocuments in Word, the Convert to Plain Text command warns that it will strip codes from the original documents. You should first manually save copies of the master and subdocuments, and then remove codes from the copies.
To remove field codes and save the formatted citations and bibliography as text:
- Open your formatted Word document. If it is a new document and has not been saved, save it before removing field codes.
If you are working with Master and Subdocuments, work with copies of your documents. - On the EndNote 2025 tab, select Convert Citations and Bibliography, and then Convert to Plain Text. Click OK in the confirmation dialog to create a new document. A copy of the document, without field codes, appears in a new document window.
- From the File menu, select Save.
- Single document: In Word’s Save As dialog, type a new name for this copy of your document and click OK.
- Master and Subdocuments: You may be advised to save a copy of the master and each subdocument.
Word saves your document without embedded formatting codes, so you can submit your paper to a publisher or share your final paper with a colleague using a different word processor (including a different version of Word).
Note: The copy does not contain Cite While You Write field codes, so you cannot reformat with Cite While You Write. To reformat, start with the original document, which retains field codes.
If you find that removing EndNote field codes produces undesired layout or other formatting changes to your document, you can remove all Microsoft Word field codes, which may yield better results.
To remove all Microsoft Word field codes:
- First save a backup copy of your document, because this will irretrievably remove the links between your document and your EndNote libraries as well as all other Word field codes.
- Select all text in the document by pressing Ctrl+A.
- Press Ctrl+6 to remove all Microsoft Word field codes from the document (not just Cite While You Write codes!) and leave the text, citations, and bibliography as they appear. (Be sure to use the number 6 on your keyboard, not the 6 on the keypad. For most U.S. keyboards, this will be the key that also includes the caret (^) symbol.)