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Mendeley: Inserting Citations & Bibliographies

Reference Management Program

What can I do if I'm having issues with the Word Plugin?

According to Mendeley, the Word plugin for Mendeley doesn't support the Office 365 click-to-run version of Word.

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Word Plug-in disconnect fix OR ActiveX component can't create object (429) in MendeleyPlugin
  1. Close/Quit Word.
  2. Open your computer's directory tree to see the files
  3. Open the folder for C:\ Program Files (x86) \ Mendeley Desktop \ wordPlugin
  4. Look for "MendeleyWordPlugin.exe"
  5. Right-click and choose "Run as administrator" or simply double-click - at first, it looks like it will try to load an application, but nothing will actually happen
  6. Go back to Word and try to insert a citation

If the steps above did not work, close both Mendeley Desktop and MS Word > re-launch Mendeley Desktop > run the .exe file as administrator or double-click > re-launch Word > insert a citation

Generating Citations with the MS Word and OpenOffice Plug-ins

Word Plugin (Old)

Download Mendeley Desktop and then install the Word Plug-In from Mendeley desktop. Before installing the Word plug-in, make sure Word is not open on your computer. Open Mendeley Desktop and select "Tools"->"Install MS Word plugin". If the word plugin is already installed, this option will be changed to "Uninstall MS Word Plugin". If that's the case, you can skip this step.

Citing items in Word using Word Plug-In (Old)

MS Word Plug-In on a Mac

On Windows MS Word the Plug-In will be under the "References" tab

Once you click on "Insert or Edit Citation" a pop-up box leads to your Mendeley desktop. Click on "Go to Mendeley"

...and choose citations to insert. Click "Cite". You can also insert multiple citations and later use the Merge feature in Mendeley to combine them.

By default the output style is in APA 6th Edition but you can choose other output styles. Information on editing a Style.

Final bibliography can be inserted and output style can be changed at any time.

Final bibliography in APA.

Drag & drop feature

You can select all your citations in Mendeley desktop and drag and drop them into MS Word document. The output citation style can be changed from within Word (Choose Citation Style).