Duke's Office of Information Technology (OIT) has released EndNote 2025. We will be working to update this guide. There are not substantive changes between EndNote 21 and EndNote 25, so much of this content still applies.
EndNote is available for free to all Duke University faculty, staff and students through Duke's Office of Information Technology (Duke OIT).
EndNote, a desktop-based program, is a sophisticated reference management tool. EndNote is most useful for:
Organizing references
Find and eliminate duplicate references
Create Smart Groups to automatically sort your references
PDF management
Automatically creates references from PDFs stored on your computer
Find Full Text feature searches online for full text of references in your library
Annotate PDFs
Inserting citations into documents and creating bibliographies
Insert citations into word processing documents and PowerPoint presentations
Bibliography automatically created when you insert citations into documents
Create independent bibliographies for grant reports, CVs, etc.
Thousands of bibliographic styles
On a PC:
On a Mac:
Follow these set up steps each time you create a new EndNote library.
To compress your EndNote library:
If you have not already synced your EndNote desktop and online libraries, click the Sync button to sync for the first time. Note: we highly recommend you first create a compressed back up library first (File>Compress Library)
There are two options to share your library: using the group or library share features, or selecting references and exporting them as a .RIS text file that can be imported into another’s EndNote library or other citation management tools like Zotero. You can also create a back-up of your EndNote library by compressing it (file > compress library), which will create a .enlx archived copy of your main EndNote library.
On a PC > Click Edit > Click Preferences
On a Mac > Click EndNote > Click Preferences
Clarivate offers robust help and troubleshooting expertise for Endnote.