I was wondering whats the best reference manager compatible with word 2016 for mac. Mendeley is not yet compatible to my knowledge and i'm looking for a software that is. Thanks in advance. Generate citations and bibliographies in a whole range of journal styles with just a few clicks. For your convenience, we've made sure Mendeley's Citation Plugin is compatible with Word (including Word for Mac) and LibreOffice. We also support BibTeX export for use with LaTeX.
What is citation management software?
Citation management software, also called “bibliographic software”, allows you to organize, store, and retrieve information, such as citations for books, articles, and Web sites. You can simultaneously import records and PDFs from databases. You can add abstracts, keywords and other functions that enhance and improve the efficiency of your project. The citation manager then works with word-processing software to insert properly formatted footnotes or citations into a paper and create a bibliography.
What it won't do:
It will not always create a perfect bibliography or reference list according to your favorite style. For example, you will still have to know APA, MLA, Chicago or Turabian and check over your results. It will not correct errors or omissions that were in the database from which you retrieved references. It will not always know what type of material you are putting into it from a database (e.g. it cannot always distinguish a proceeding from a book).
![Citation Citation](https://www.sonnysoftware.com/files/pasted-graphic-3.jpg)
What are online citation builders?
Citation builders are free, online sites that allow you to quickly create citations and bibliographies but not to store information or link to word-processing software. For a list, simply Google 'citation builders' for a list. AU students are encouraged to learn how to use citation management software rather than relying on citation builders.
How do I know which tool to use?
There is no one program that currently works best to support everyone's needs. Online citation builders are helpful when you are in a rush and have a small number of sources to manage. Citation software is more time consuming but extremely useful for handling larger, more complex citations and for its word processing compatibility. There are a variety of citation software tools available and each has its own strengths. The AU Library provides EndNote as a free download to the AU community. The Library also offers support for Zotero and Mendeley, two other citation software tools. Please see the comparison table of citation software below.
When writing a thesis or scientific paper, authors often need to keep track of references to cite other works. While it might be fine to handle those manually at first, things can get complicated with a larger number of references. Dedicated reference managers can help here, because they simplify the tasks of finding, storing and citing references. Some of these tools also integrate with Ulysses. In the following tutorial, we’ll explain how to use the reference managers EndNote and Bookends with Ulysses and Microsoft Word.
The Workflow in a Nutshell
A typical workflow involves collecting publications on a research topic first. When writing in Ulysses, you would insert references to those publications using so-called citekeys. As a final step, you then export your text to Microsoft Word and finish formatting the manuscript.
Limitations
Not all of the steps involved in this workflow work on iPad/iPhone. For the least you’ll need a Mac (or a Windows PC) with Microsoft Word and EndNote/Bookends installed, as the add-ins for processing the citekeys are not available for Word’s iOS app.
Preparations in Ulysses
Before copying the citekeys from either EndNote or Bookends, the markup in Ulysses needs to be changed. The citekeys copied from the reference managers look something like {Soulmen:2015le}, i.e. a unique identifier of the reference, enclosed in curly bracess. In Ulysses’ default markup language Markdown XL, these brackets are used as tags for annotations. Since you want to keep the citekeys as they are and not convert them to annotations, you can either use another markup (such as regular Markdown) or create a custom markup.
Creating your own markup, however, can only be done in Ulysses for Mac. In case you don’t own a Mac, or do not want to change the markup yourself, you can download a markup customized for the use with citekeys here. Open the sheet with Ulysses and follow the instructions inside the sheet.
If you own a Mac, you can also customize the markup yourself as follows:
1. Open Ulysses’ preferences and switch to the Markup tab. Click on the markup popup button at the top left and select “New Markup…”.
2. Enter a new name for your markup (e.g. “Citations”) and pick Markdown XL as a template.
3. Afterwards, scroll down to the annotations markup and double-click it to modify the tags. You can now change the tag for annotations to use angular brackets < > instead of curly braces { }. Then, click OK.
Your custom markup will of course sync to your iPad and iPhone. To use it, however, you’ll need to switch the markup for every sheet where you’d like to insert citations. Here is how to do that:
On Mac, go to the menu “Edit” › “Convert Markup“ and select “Citations”.
On iPad or iPhone, change the markup via the editor settings.
This will only work for the sections iCloud and On My Mac/iPad/iPhone. For External Folders, you can only use regular Markdown, which doesn’t include annotations anyway. For more details on changing markup, see this blog post.
After this is done, you can start inserting references into your texts.
Inserting References on Mac
In EndNote or Bookends, please right-click on the reference you want to insert into Ulysses and select “Copy” or use the shortcut ⌘C (command-C).
Switch to Ulysses, right-click into the editor where you want to insert the reference and choose “Paste” from the context menu or use the shortcut ⌘V (command-V). The citekey will be inserted at the correct position in your text:
Inserting References on iPad/iPhone
In EndNote, select your reference, tap the Actions button and choose “Copy temporary citation” (which is just another term for citekey).
When working in Bookends, select a reference, tap the “Share” button and choose “Citation”. In the panel, tap the citekey which will copy the citation.
![Citation Citation](/uploads/1/2/5/7/125701790/695280970.png)
Then, switch back to Ulysses, tap the spot where you want to insert the reference, and choose “Paste”.
Formatting the Manuscript…
Once you’ve finished your manuscript in Ulysses, you can export it as a DOCX file.
Open the file in Microsoft Word for Mac in order to format your in-text citations and to add a bibliography at the end.
… with EndNote
In Word, go to the tab “EndNote X9” and click “Update Citations and Bibliography”. The citekeys will be formatted accordingly as in-text references:
The bibliography at the end includes all referenced works:
… with Bookends
In Word, go to the tab “Add-Ins” and click “Scan Document”. You will be redirected to Bookends where you can choose your citation style and are presented with other options:
Choose a style and click OK. Your in-text citations will be formatted accordingly and a bibliography will be created automatically:
Using reference managers such as Bookends or EndNote greatly simplifies the process of handling large amounts of references. Together with Ulysses, you can easily insert the references without having to think of their formatting while writing.
Happy citing!
This article was last updated August 9, 2018.