Create a bibliography

A bibliography is a list of sources, usually placed at the end of a document, that you consulted or cited in creating the document. In Microsoft Office Word, you can automatically generate a bibliography based on the source information that you provide for the document.

Each time that you create a new source, the source information is saved on your computer, so that you can find and use any source you have created.What do you want to do?

Add a new citation and source to a document

Find a source

Edit a citation placeholder

Create a bibliography

Add a new citation and source to a document

When you add a new citation to a document, you also create a new source that will appear in the bibliography.

1. On the References tab, in the Citations & Bibliography group, click the arrow next to Style.

   

2. Click the style that you want to use for the citation and source.

   For example, social sciences documents usually use the MLA or APA styles for citations and sources.

3. Click at the end of the sentence or phrase that you want to cite.
4. On the References tab, in the Citations & Bibliography group, click Insert Citation.

   

5. Do one of the following:
   • To add the source information, click Add New Source.
   • To add a placeholder, so that you can create a citation and fill in the source information later, click Add new placeholder. A question mark appears next to placeholder sources in Source Manager.
6. Begin to fill in the source information by clicking the arrow next to Type of source.

   For example, your source might be a book, a report, or a Web site.

7. Fill in the bibliography information for the source.

   To add more information about a source, click the Show All Bibliography Fields check box.

Notes:

• To find additional sources, or additional information about sources that you are citing, click Insert Citations, and then click Search Libraries. For example, you can search a library database for every match of a particular topic in that library's collection. Then, with a single click, you can insert the citation in the document, or you can add the source information to the current list of sources for later use.
• If you choose a GOST or ISO 690 style for your sources and a citation is not unique, append an alphabetic character to the year. For example, a citation would appear as [Pasteur, 1848a].
• If you chose ISO 690 - Numerical Order and you add citations to your document, you must click the ISO 690 style again to correctly order the citations.

Find a source

The list of sources that you consult or cite can become quite long. At times you might search for a source that you cited in another document by using the Manage Sources command.

1. On the References tab, in the Citations & Bibliography group, click Manage Sources.

   

   If you open a new document that does not yet contain citations, all of the sources that you used in previous documents appear under Master List.

   If you open a document that includes citations, the sources for those citations appear under Current List, and all sources that you have cited, either in previous documents or in the current document, appear under Master List.

2. To find a specific source, do one of the following:
   • In the sorting box, sort by author, title, citation tag name, or year, and then search the resulting list for the source that you want to find.
   • In the Search box, type the title or author for the source that you want to find. The list dynamically narrows to match your search term.

Note You can click the Browse button in Source Manager to select another master list from which you can import new sources into your document. For example, you might connect to a file on a share, on a research colleague's computer or server, or on a Web site that is hosted by a university or research institution.

Edit a citation placeholder

Occasionally, you may want to create a placeholder citation, and then wait until later to fill in the complete bibliography source information. Any changes that you make to a source are automatically reflected in the bibliography, if you have already created one. A question mark appears next to placeholder sources in Source Manager.

1. On the References tab, in the Citations & Bibliography group, click Manage Sources.

   

2. Under Current List, click the placeholder that you want to edit.

   Note Placeholder sources are alphabetized in Source Manager, along with all other sources, based on the placeholder tag name. Placeholder tag names are numbers by default, but you can customize the placeholder tag name with whatever tag you want.

3. Click Edit.
4. Begin to fill in the source information by clicking the arrow next to Type of source.

   For example, your source might be a book, a report, or a Web site.

5. Fill in the bibliography information for the source. Use the Edit button to fill in fields instead of having to type names in the appropriate format.

   To add more information about a source, click the Show All Bibliography Fields check box.

Create a bibliography

You can create a bibliography at any point after you insert one or more sources in a document. If you don't have all of the information that you need about a source to create a complete citation, you can use a placeholder citation, and then complete the source information later.

Note Placeholder citations do not appear in the bibliography.

1. Click where you want to insert a bibliography, usually at the end of the document.
2. On the References tab, in the Citations & Bibliography group, click Bibliography.

   

3. Click a predesigned bibliography format to insert the bibliography into the document.