Library Guides: EndNote: Adding references manually

Adding references manually

To enter references manually:

From the References menu, select New Reference or press Ctrl+N
In the Reference Type box, click on the drop-down menu to select an appropriate reference type, e.g. Book
Click on Edit > Preferences > Reference Types and select your own default reference type from the drop-down menu, click Apply then OK
To add information to any field, put your cursor in the desired field. See tabs below for further instructions

Saving references

You can save a reference as you go along by clicking on the Save button in the top right-hand corner of the record or press Ctrl+S. You can also close the window and this will prompt you to save the reference.

Adding content

Adding authors

Authors can be added in the format Bloggs, Jo C. or Jo C. Bloggs
If you're entering initials instead of full names, type a full stop or space between initials (e.g. Bloggs, J. C.) if you entered a name like JC Bloggs, it will interpret JC as the first name
Whre there is more than one author, enter them on seperate lines (use the return key on your keyboard after each author name)
Enter all the authors for a reference. EndNote will automatically add "et al." or include all the authors, according to your referencing style.

Organisation/coporate authors

Corporate or organisation names must be followed by a comma (e.g. Imperial College London,) otherwise EndNote will assume the last word is an author's surname and your references will appear as London, Imperial College

Note that the text will appear in red if a particular author or keyword has not been used before. Once they have been used, EndNote will recognise them.

There are three fields in EndNote that are associated with Term Lists, these fields are; Author and Editor names, Journals, and Keywords. However, term lists can also be created for other fields. These lists are updated automatically as you enter new terms into these fields and help with data entry, accuracy and consistency.

The term lists are saved in the .Data folder of the library. For more information see the section on Importing Term Lists.

Adding content to other fields

Year

Generally, you should enter the four digits of the publication year, e.g. 2024.

Title

Enter titles without a full stop or any other punctuation at the end. Do not press the Enter key while typing titles and for long titles just let the text wrap to the next line.

Publisher fields

Enter the City and Publisher name without a full stop or any other punctuation at the end.

Edition

EndNote does not modify the text of the Edition field when formatting your bibliography. Therefore, make sure to enter the suffix (st, nd, th and so on) if you need it to appear like that in your bibliography.

Label

The Label field can be used for any purpose, for instance as an additional field for identification or categorizing the reference.

Keywords

The Keywords field is another field associated with a term list, so it will suggest keyword names as you enter them into the field providing it finds a match in the keywords term list. New entries will appear in red text. Press Enter to go to the next line to add another keyword or TAB to go to the next field.

URL

Type or paste a valid URL into the field and it becomes a hyperlink. To add multiple links into the field enter each link on a separate line.

File attachments

You can use the File Attachments field to store a link to a PDF or any other file. In a reference, when you link a file to the File Attachments field you will have the choice of saving a relative or absolute link to the file.

Select your reference, and click the + Attach File button at the top of the Summary view of the record
In the Select a file to link to the reference dialog box, navigate to your chosen file and click Open

Screenshot of file attachment icon

Note the check box on the bottom left of the Window: Copy this file to the default file attachment folder and create a relative link. This will give you two options:

Relative Link: when the box is checked, a copy of the original file will be created and placed in the .Data folder of the corresponding EndNote library.
Absolute Link: when the box is un-checked, EndNote will create a full path and filename to the original file. However, you should remember that the absolute links are static not dynamic. This means if you ever change the location of the file the link will not work and EndNote will not be able to access the file unless you update the field with the new link.

File attachments dialog box