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Citation Management

This guide shares helpful citation tools that will keep you organized when collecting multiple citations.

Campus-Wide Availability

EndNote X9 LogoEndNote X9 is now available campus-wide, and is free for MSU students, faculty, and staff through a library subscription. EndNote is one of the most used citation managers. It is a bibliographic management and formatting program that can help you manage citations, PDFs, and in text references throughout the process of writing a research paper.

  • Find, store, and organize references
  • Connect the citations to the full text of articles
  • Organize you references into groups
  • Share groups with others
  • Import PDFs and citations
  • Format bibliographies in APA, MLA, Chicago, and thousands of other styles
  • Store references from Web of Science and other databases

Windows Installation

EndNote Download, Click Open Containing FolderThe exact installation steps vary depending on what browser you use and settings on your computer. Be sure to close Microsoft Word and other Microsoft Office programs before beginning.

  1. Click on the Windows Installer link below
  2. Login with your NetID and password
  3. SAVE the file
  4. Once the download is complete, click Show in Folder or Open FolderExtract All
  5. Right Click on the MSU-EndNoteX file
  6. Choose Extract All
  7. Extract to the default directory with the "Show extracted files when complete" checked
  8. Double click the ENX9Inst file to start the installation

Note: If you are prompted for a product key, start again and make sure the folder you downloaded is unzipped before running the installer. You can do this by right-clicking on the folder that you downloaded, then choosing "Extract All".

Licensee: MSU LibraryProblems?

Be sure that you saved and then extracted/unzipped. You should see that the Licensee is MSU Library as shown in this screenshot. It should not ask you to pay for a copy. If that happens, try the installation again, step-by-step as described above.

You may also want to try unsinstalling and then re-installing again. If the Licensee does not show as MSU Library, stop the install and try again being sure to extract the files and then click on the ENX7Inst or ENX7Inst.msi file to start the installation. Be sure you are in the non-zipped folder (no zipper icon or 7zip icon).

Mac Installation

On a Mac, follow these steps to install EndNote X9EndNote 9 Mac Installation Screen Shot

  1. Click the Mac Installer File link below
  2. Login with your NetID and password
  3. Launch the EndNoteX9SiteInstaller.dmg file
  4. Double-click the Install EndNote X9.app similar to the image shown to the right
  5. This will bring up an image with "Licensed to" and your license name.
  6. Click Install. Note: This may take some time to complete.
  7. This will launch the EndNote X9 application to customize the installation
  8. Click through the customizer screens to complete the installation

 Mac Notes:

* Recommendation: Remove the Installer file when finished since it looks just like the program icon

* Drag and drop downloaded citations onto the EndNote X9 icon on your dock to import. Otherwise, try Firefox rather than Chrome or Safari. to export citations directly into EndNote more easily.

EndNote X9 requires macOS 10.10 or above. If you have a Mac running an older macOS version, you should use EndNote X7 instead of X9. See the EndNote X7 installer below.

Read this article from EndNote if you have already updated to macOS Catalina.