Instant Formatting

Mostly, when you insert a reference into a Word document from Endnote, the citation is quickly updated to be the fully formatted citation and the reference added to the reference list at the end of a document.

Sometimes, this is not the best or most convenient method of having your references formatted. For example, I mentioned last time the problem with using brackets for notes of the same type as Endnote uses for its in text citation delimiters.

If you have just one example of this, every time you insert a citation, you will get Endnote asking you which reference your bracketed comment refers to.

If this gets annoying (and it almost certainly will), you can turn off Endnote’s instant formatting feature.

To do this, click on the little arrowed box at the bottom right of the Bibliography group on the Endnote tab.

This brings up the format bibliography dialog box.

If you click on the Instant Formatting tab, you can turn the feature on and off.

Click on Turn Off and then OK.

Your citations will now remain unformatted in your document until you instruct the program to format them yourself. To do that, click on the Update Citations and Bibliography in the Bibliography group on the Endnote tab (top picture of this post).