Formatting Preferences

The Formatting preferences panel allows you to control the formatting of bibliography entries in a word processor and whether EndNote automatically omits duplicate references from a bibliography.

To access these settings, go to the EndNoteEdit menu, select Preferences, and then select Formatting from the list of preferences.

Suggest formatting with EndNote’s Cite While You Write if the document type is supported

While the Format Paper feature for RTF files can be used on most word processor files, we recommend that you always use Cite While You Write for Microsoft Word documents. It is much easier and allows more control and options to give you the exact output you want.

When this item is selected, and you attempt to use Format Paper on a document that could be formatted with Cite While You Write, a message will appear recommending that you use Cite While You Write. You can still use Format Paper if you wish.

Omit Author and/or Year from Formatted Citation if Removed from Temporary Citation

EndNote’s default behavior is to remove the author or year from the formatted citation if you remove either of those items from a temporary (unformatted) citation. For example, "{, 1999 #24}" would format as just "(1999)" when using a style that creates (Author, Year) citations. If you prefer to type just the record number into your papers as the temporary citation, you should turn this preference off so EndNote will not remove the author and year from all of your formatted citations.

Merge Duplicates in Bibliography

When you select this option, EndNote automatically omits duplicate references from a bibliography. Use this option if you are citing references from multiple EndNote libraries in one paper. In this situation, the same article reference might appear in two libraries and would have two different record numbers. EndNote will not identify the records as duplicates unless you have this option set to merge duplicates.

When you select this option, EndNote checks the bibliography for duplicate references during the formatting process. If duplicates are found, they are removed. References are considered duplicates if they are the same reference type (such as Journal Article or Book) and the following fields are identical: Author, Year, Title, Secondary Title (Journal, Newspaper, Magazine, Book Title, Series Title, Conference Name, and so on), Volume, Issue, and Pages.

Note: The Duplicates Preferences settings do not apply to this feature. The criteria for determining duplicates is fixed for the "Merge Duplicates in Bibliography" setting.

Related Topics

Cite While You Write Preferences

Omitting Authors or Years from Citations