Mendeley also provides a Web Importer tool which allows you to import citations, and sometimes the full text article, directly from your browser in to your library.
Open Mendeley Desktop and from the Tools menu select 'Uninstall MS Word Plugin'. Upon reopening Word, you'll find the plugin is no longer loaded. Was this answer helpful? The Mendeley citation plugin allows you to insert citations and create bibliographies in Microsoft Word and LibreOffice documents. To install the citation plugin, select Tools from the Mendeley menu bar. Mendeley detects which compatible word processors you have installed, and displays the citation plugin options for those programs. Using the Plugin Generating Citations with the MS Word and Open Office Plug-ins (Mendeley Minute) Mac and Windows Mac. Depending on your operating system, the MS Word Plugin will appear differently. If you are using Word for Mac, you will have a floating bar or an Add-in, depending on your version of Word (Pictured: Word 2016 for Mac): Windows.
To install the plugin from the Mendeley app click Tools >> Install Web Importer.
Depending on which browser you use the importer will be in a different location but regardless of the browser it will function the same.
In Chrome and Firefox the plugin appears in the upper right corner of your browser, while for Safari and Edge users, the Mendeley plugin shows up in the bookmarks or favorites bar.
Example of Chrome Plugin
Browser Security Conflicts
Sometimes there is a conflict with your browser's security settings and the plugin. Follow the steps below to resolve this issue:
Chrome
Click 'Customise' (three black lines on the top right of the screen), and then 'Settings'. Click 'Show Advanced Settings' at the bottom of the page, then click 'Content Settings...' under 'Privacy'. Then, under 'Cookies' click 'Manage exceptions...' and allow mendeley.com, then click 'Done'.
Mozilla Firefox
Click the Menu button at the top right and click 'Options'. Then, under the 'Privacy' tab, either set the 'History' drop down option to 'Use custom settings for history' tick 'Accept Third Party Cookies'. Add www.mendeley.com to the 'Exceptions' box. Click 'Save Changes' to save.
For more information you can have a look at Mozilla Firefox's page on enabling and disabling cookies.
Mendeley Reference Manager is useful for storing, editing, and viewing PDFs on your computer and automatically creating citation data from the PDFs.
Import PDF documents — When you import a PDF into Mendeley, it will try to extract information from the PDF to create a citation – author, title, year, volume, etc. You can do this by:
- Using the Add New button.
- Go to the File menu and select Add Files.
- Drag-and-drop PDFs from your computer to the Document Pane (the middle part of the window).
Manually add a citation. This is useful if you don’t have a PDF to add to Mendeley. If you manually add a citation but later have a PDF, the PDF can be added to the citation.
Choice of citation style. Mendeley comes with some citation styles, but it has hundreds of additional styles you can download by following the instructions on the CSL Citation Styles website.
Folders/Collections of documents. You can create collections to organize your documents in whatever groupings make sense to you. Documents can be in more than one collection.
Tagging of documents. This is in addition to the keywords, which could be pulled from journal databases. Tags can be more informal words that help you arrange your documents around concepts that make the most sense to you.
Ability to quickly mark documents as Favorites, Read, or Unread. Stars indicate your favorite sources, and the green dots indicate that it is unread.
Reading of PDFs from within a Mendeley PDF viewer. In the viewer, you can highlight text, create notes, and select text.
Plug-ins to connect to Microsoft Word (PC and Mac) and LibreOffice (PC, Mac, and Linux). Plug-ins allow access to your Mendeley Library from Word to create citations and bibliographies in your Word document.
Citing Items in Word with the MS Word Plugin
1. Open Mendeley Reference Manager and select 'Tools' and then 'Install Mendeley Cite for Microsoft Word.' If the plugin is already installed, this option will be changed to 'Uninstall MS Word Plugin.'
2. Open Microsoft Word and click on the 'References' tab.
3. You should see a box titled 'Cite with Mendeley.' This is the Word plugin.
4. If you click the 'Mendeley Cite' button within this box, a window pops up with options to search the Mendeley Library.
Mendeley Word Plugin Problem Macbook
If you search for an item directly from this box, you'll see a list of results appears below the search bar. Select the one you want, click 'Insert 1 Citation' and you'll see the citation appear in your paper.
5. If you choose not to insert a citation, make sure to click cancel. Otherwise Mendeley will think you’re still trying to insert a citation and won’t let you insert another.
Mendeley Word Plugin Problem Mac
6. Automatically generate a bibliography or works cited page by clicking 'More' and then 'Insert Bibliography.' This tool will create a full citation for every source used in your paper.
If you are using a different operating system (such as Mac or Libre), it may be helpful to look through Mendeley's guide 'Using the Citation Plugin'.
Sync your Library with your Mendeley Web account.
This will allow you to access to your data on your Mendeley Web account. If you want to have the desktop application installed on more than one computer, syncing through the Mendeley Web account will keep the information up-to-date on all of your machines.