Word’s References Tool

MS Word 2007, 2010, and 2013 have a fairly simple tool that will create properly formatted citations and references. The “References” tool is accessed through the “References” tab above the Ribbon (the section with all of the buttons across the top of the screen).

As you find each source of information that you will be using in your writing, input the information about the source (author, name of the book, article, Web page, etc.) into Word’s References tool. These instructions will be using a journal article as the example, but they will also inform you how to use other sources such as books, Web sites, and more.

Now that you have a journal article in hand follow these steps:

1. Click on the “References” tab near above the ribbon at the top of your screen.

2. In the References ribbon that opens, select your writing style. In our example we will be using “APA 5th Edition” even though the most current APA manual edition is the 6th edition.

3. Next select “Manage Sources.”

4. In the window that will open, select “New.”

5. In the next window, click in the box in the lower left corner that is labeled, “Show all Bibliography Fields.”

6. Now open the drop down arrow in the “Type of Source” window and select your type of source. In this example we are using a Journal Article.

7. At this point, start entering the information about your source. First, enter the author’s name. Start by clicking the “Edit” button.

8. When you enter the title of the article, use sentence case; only the first word gets capitalized unless another word is a proper noun.

9. Enter ALL of the data that you have about the article, even if the cell is not starred. For example, volume is often available for the journal – put it into the volume cell.
TIP: If you don’t know what the information in a cell should look like, click in