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EndNote Guide

What is EndNote?

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EndNote 21 is your comprehensive solution for managing references and streamlining the research process.

Centralized, Searchable Library

Keep all your references and related materials organized in a searchable personal library. This centralized location makes it easy to retrieve information, helping you stay organized throughout your research journey.

Sync Across Devices

With the EndNote Sync feature, synchronize your references across multiple platforms. Whether using three personal computers, an EndNote Web library, or your iPad or iPhone, your references are always within reach. Please note: To utilize this feature, you must be the owner and user of all three computers.

Collaborate with Ease

Set up a Library Sharing team and grant access to your designated synced library. With the ability to collaborate with up to 1,000 co-authors and colleagues, EndNote 21 makes teamwork effortless and efficient.

Seamless Citation

Integrate EndNote 21 with your word processor documents to cite your references. Create formatted citations, bibliographies, or independent reference lists with ease, ensuring your references are correctly formatted every time.

EndNote 21 is more than just a reference management software. It’s a powerful tool to facilitate collaboration and streamline research.


Join us this fall for an 8-part webinar series dedicated to the basic and advanced functionality in EndNote 21. Pick and choose the sessions most interesting to you or join us for all to go from beginner to advanced EndNote user.

Quick start

Jumpstart your research by reviewing the most essential EndNote workflows to help manage references in a writing project.

EndNote 21

Objectives of this resource: This video covers key EndNote 21 workflows on Microsoft Windows: creating libraries and references, direct exporting, file attachment linking, capturing references and PDFs with EndNote Click, citing references in Word, and changing output styles. Duration: 7 minutes
Objectives of this resource: This video covers key EndNote 21 workflows on Apple macOS: creating libraries and references, direct exporting, file attachment linking, capturing references and PDFs with EndNote Click, citing references in Word, and changing output styles. Duration: 7 minutes

EndNote 20

Objectives of this resource: This video covers key EndNote 20 workflows on Microsoft Windows: creating libraries, direct exporting, file attachment linking, group creation, Find Full Text searching, citing references in Word, and changing output styles.. Duration: 7 minutes

Objectives of this resource: This video covers key EndNote 20 workflows on Apple macOS: creating libraries, direct exporting, file attachment linking, group creation, Find Full Text searching, citing references in Word, and changing output styles.. Duration: 7 minutes

EndNote X9

Objectives of this resource: This video covers key EndNote X9 workflows on Microsoft Windows: creating libraries, direct exporting, file attachment linking, group creation, Find Full Text searching, citing references in Word, and changing output styles.. Duration: 5 minutes

Objectives of this resource: creating libraries, direct exporting, file attachment linking, group creation, Find Full Text searching, citing references in Word, and changing output styles.. Duration: 6 minutes

Recorded Webinars

By the end of this session you will be able to create a new library, manually create references, and use a database to export references. Duration: 30 minutes.

By the end of this session you will be able to manage a library using tags and groups, use Cite While you Write, and select an EndNote output style. Duration: 26 minutes.

By the end of this session you will be able to link a PDF to your EndNote library, use EndNote to discover PDFs for existing references, and emply PDF importing to find metadata for files on your hard drive. Duration: 36 minutes.


View upcoming webinars for EndNote and other tools at the link below.


EndNote 21 essentials

Advanced features in EndNote 21

Set up your EndNote library

Objectives of this resource: this visual aid shows an example of the EndNote library creation process. Duration: ~1 minute

Adding references to your library

Manual creation

Direct export

Objectives of this resource: this visual aid walks through an example PubMed.gov search and direct exporting search results to EndNote. Duration: ~1 minute

Objectives of this resource: direct export references from your Web of Science search to your EndNote library. Duration: 5 minutes

Import PDFs

Objectives of this resource: this visual aid walks through the steps for importing a folder of PDFs into EndNote simultaneously. Duration: 1 minute

Online Search

Objectives of this resource: this visual aid provides an example of querying the PubMed database remotely through EndNote via Online Search. Duration: 1 minute

Linking file attachments

Attach File

Objectives of this resource: this visual aid shows the process for manually attaching a file to a reference in your EndNote library. Duration: ~1 minute

Find Full Text

Objectives of this resource: this visual aid shows an example Find Full Text search in action. Duration: 1 minute

Citing and generating bibliographies

Cite While You Write in Microsoft Word

Objectives of this session: use EndNote’s Cite While You Write feature, troubleshoot Word issues, add chapter bibliographies, create categorized reference lists, use EndNote with LaTeX, and work with documents without EndNote. Duration: 39 minutes

EndNote 21 Cite While You Write add-in for Microsoft Word Online

Objectives of this resource: this instructional video outlines the installation and usage of the EndNote 21 Cite While You Write add-in for Microsoft Word. Duration: 4 minutes

EndNote 21 Cite While You Write add-in for Google Docs

Objectives of this resource: this instructional video guides you through the installation and functionality of the EndNote 21 Cite While You Write add-on in Google Docs. Duration: 4 minutes

EndNote plug-in for Apple Pages

Objectives of this session: insert in-text citations within your Pages document and link them to your EndNote library, discover how to change your EndNote output style and modify the appearance of individual citations according to your preferences, create formatted footnote references and reposition them within your document, and customize your reference list and adjust its layout and formatting. Duration: 36 minutes

Format Paper command

Independent bibliographies

Quickly capture references and PDFs with EndNote Click

Objectives of this session: install the browser extension, create an EndNote Click account, access your Locker, capture an in-line search result, and directly export multiple references at one time to EndNote desktop. Duration: 30 minutes

Library syncing and sharing

Objectives of this resource: this visual aid shows the steps for configuring the Sync feature in EndNote desktop. Duration: ~1 minute

Objectives of this resource: this visual aid shows where to Find Sync Status details in EndNote after designating a Sync library. Duration: ~1 minute

On-the-go research with EndNote Web

Objectives of this resource: discover how to sync an EndNote 21 library with EndNote Web, log into the web platform, sort your references, hide or reveal the Reference panel, search for metadata updates, and organize your online references with custom groups and group sets. Duration: 3 minutes

Working with EndNote online (Classic)

Objectives of this session: learn how to log into or create an EndNote online account and link it with your Web of Science account for enhanced features. You will review the My References tab and learn how to manually construct references in EndNote online. You will also configure the Online Search option and probe remote databases such as PubMed and Web of Science. You will discover how to export references directly from these databases and categorize them into custom groups in EndNote online. You will also find out how to identify and eliminate duplicate references from your EndNote library and share your references with other EndNote online users. Moreover, you will learn how to attach files to your references and install the Cite While You Write plugin in Microsoft Word. Finally, you will demonstrate how to insert, remove and modify references in your Word documents using the Cite While You Write functions. Duration: 1 hour 18 minutes

Administrator resources

Objectives of this resource: Access administrator tools, customize Clarivate-developed content file lists, upload new and modified connection files, and import filters or output styles.. Duration: 2 minutes

EndNote for iPad and iPhone

Objectives of this resource: Acquire the skills to authenticate or register for an EndNote online account, construct new references, retrieve file attachments, categorize your library using groups, and demonstrate remote database searching directly from the app. Duration: 12 minutes

Objectives of this session: Learn how to log into or sign up for an EndNote online account, create references, access file attachments, organize your library with groups and search remote databases from within the app. Duration: 30 minutes