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EndNote 20 Assisting You in Research: Getting Started

This guide covers the main functions of Endnote that will help you with finding resources, creating bibliographies, and generating properly-formatted citations.

Sorry to Inform You

Unfortunately EndNote 20 and any new versions moving forward, are no longer available for free for APU students and Faculty. 

Options: 

You could either pay for an EndNote license (currently EndNote 21) for $275, $150 for a student license) or switch over to another Citation Manager software like the free Zotero. 

What about expired Endnote license? To upgrade from EndNote 20 to the new EndNote 21 license, you must do so from within your expired EndNote program in order to retrieve your My EndNote Library references.

For using Zotero, we have created a brief handout on How to Use Zotero. 

Also, if needed, here are the steps to move records from My EndNote Library to Zotero here. 

Associated note: you can link to APU's library holdings in Zotero by going to Edit, Preferences, then Advanced. Under "Open URL" select North America, then Azusa Pacific University.

Updated: May 13, 2024

Installing EndNote

If you do not have EndNote on your computer yet, and you are a student, faculty, or staff member at APU or LAPU, you can download EndNote here for free.  Follow the instructions for Downloading & Installing EndNote.

Now that you have EndNote installed, you are ready to start the program and begin using it to aid in your research.

Start EndNote.  As you begin to use EndNote, there may appear one or more dialog boxes suggesting that you upgrade.  Yes, go ahead and upgrade, it's included with APU's paid subscription and free to you! 

Once the program starts, the first place to go is the File menu in the menu bar at the top left of the program display - in order to create a new "My EndNote Library." An EndNote Library represents a collection of references (or records) such as books, journal articles, and more that you've collected.  "My EndNote Library" can also contain full text PDF files that have been imported to go with its respective reference and its citation information.

First Steps in EndNote

This section of this Guide provides instructions for performing common tasks.  Fundamental to EndNote is your "My EndNote Library."  When the program starts, you can:

  • Create a new My EndNote Library (note: My EndNote Library is the default name which you can change)
  • Use an existing My EndNote Library

If you are just starting out you will need to create a new My EndNote Library, and therefore you will need to select that option. Once a new library (My EndNote Library) has been created, you can do any of several things:

  • Perform an online search for resources, such as journal articles
  • Import the references found into your My EndNote Library and files that go with the reference such as a PDF or sound file.
  • Organize references into Groups to aid in finding specific items
  • Create bibliographies in a specific style format (APA, MLA, etc.) 
  • Have EndNote insert properly-formatted citations into your Word document, Wolfram Mathematica, or Apple Pages
  • Synchronize your My EndNote Library with EndNote Web (cloud-based feature) so that your library can be accessed from any device with a web browser, and accessed by co-authors and co-scholars with your permission. 

There are other features in EndNote, but this LibGuide covers these common activities.

Create a New Library

To create a new My EndNote Library, follow these steps:

  1. When the program is started, it will ask if you want to create a Library. If you are already in the program, choose "File," then "New."
  2. Choose a location for your local My EndNote Library. If you are not using your personal computer but a computer in the library, you should put your My EndNote Library on a flash drive because your library will disappear from the computer when you log off or when the computer is restarted.  It is recommended that you synchronize your library on EndNote Web (a cloud-based application) as a backup in case your flash drive, computer, tablet, smart phone, or other device fails to keep it in tact.
  3. Select a name for the library that is meaningful to you (change "My EndNote Library" to something meaningful).  It is possible to have multiple Libraries. But a simpler approach is recommended, where you have just one Library and in that Library create Groups to keep references separated by project, course, etc.
  4.  Press "Save"

Create a Group

Before you begin importing references (citation information for a source) or the full-text PDF into EndNote, it is recommended that you set up "Groups".  A Group in EndNote is like a directory on your computer (like File Explorer in Windows 10).  It can be used to store specific references and their respective full texts.  This will enable you to keep separate bibliography references for different classes or assignments.

To create a group

1. Right-click on "My Groups" in the left-most column of EndNote

2. Select "Create Group" EndNote will create a place for the group name.

 

 

3. Type in a Group name and press "Enter"

 

 

You can repeat this process for as many Groups as you wish.  You can create a Group any time and move records around from Group to Group.