Custom Settings

EndNote allows you to customize many areas of the program to suit your needs. Most settings are saved for each user.

General Preferences

Most general preferences are stored in the Windows Registry. This includes many EndNote Preferences, subject bibliography settings, and Cite While You Write settings.

Reference Types

If you plan to share your libraries with other users, you may want to limit use of new and modified reference types.

Changes made to the reference types table apply to all libraries opened on that computer from the current user account.
If your library is opened from a different computer, your references will follow the layout of the reference types table for that computer and user.

If you create a custom reference type or modify a reference type for records in your EndNote library, you should make sure the reference type is also created or modified on other computers that will access the library. See Backing Up or Sharing Your Reference Types Table.

Saved Searches

Search strategy files are saved by default in your Searches folder:

Windows 10: C:\ Users\User Name\ AppData\Roaming\EndNote\Searches

Windows 11: C:\ Users\User Name\ AppData\Roaming\EndNote\Searches

You may save them elsewhere if you prefer, but EndNote will open to this Searches folder when you choose to Load a saved search. EndNote search files use “.enq” as the file name extension.

Cite While You Write

Cite While You Write codes are directly compatible between the versions of Word EndNote 2025 supports. See Program Requirements for information on the versions supported.

Because reference data is kept with each formatted citation, you can collaborate with other authors on a paper without each author having the same library.