Showing Word Processor Codes
The formatted citations and bibliography in your document are not plain text; they contain hidden data that make it possible for EndNote to unformat and reformat citations and bibliographies.
Microsoft Word’s Field Shading
Formatted citations and bibliographies in Word documents are Microsoft Word fields. This gives EndNote the ability to uniquely identify them.
When you click on a field in Word (such as a formatted EndNote citation or the bibliography), it becomes shaded. You can change this behavior so that the fields are always shaded, shaded only when selected, or never shaded. To do so:
- In Word, select Options from the File menu.
- Click the Advanced button and scroll down to the Show Document Content section.
- From the drop-down Field shading menu, select your preferred option. These include:
- Never: This option will always show field codes as though they were plain text, with no shading.
- Always: This option will always shade field codes, making it easy to see them. This can be very helpful when troubleshooting a document because corrupted EndNote citations cannot be unformatted. If you think you have corrupted citations in your paper, make a copy of the document (never do this to the original), then in the copy unformat the citations and set the Field Codes preference to always show shading. When you scan through your document, you will easily spot any EndNote citations that did not unformat, indicating corruption of the code. You can then go back to the original document to delete those citations and reinsert them from EndNote.
- When Selected: This is the default setting. It will show shading only when you click on (select) a field code, such as an EndNote citation.
Note: Field shading never prints; it only shows on the screen to help you locate field codes in your document. The Word settings of the person viewing the document control the shading, not the document creator. If you send your document to someone and they complain about the shading, they will need to adjust their Word options. You can send them these instructions to help them with that.
- Click OK to close the preferences window and save your changes.
Note: If you are seeing detailed field code information, see Field Codes in Word and General Preferences for Microsoft Word for information on showing and hiding field codes.