Ask a librarian frequently asked questions

There are a number of common causes for this issue.

• incorrect data in the reference in an EndNote library, or
• the references not being connected to EndNote properly.

As a first step, go to the EndNote menu in Word and click 'Update Citations and Bibliography'.
 

• References look strange and appear in curly brackets
  Your document is in unformatted citations mode. Go to the EndNote menu in Word and select 'Update Citations and Bibliography'.
   
• References in curly brackets don’t go away after updating citations 
  Word can’t find the EndNote reference it has associated with that citation. Check you have the correct library open and that you haven’t accidentally deleted that reference from EndNote.
   
• Corporate authors
  If you are citing a company or government agency, you will need to put a comma at the end of the full organisation name in the EndNote Library reference.
  For example: Australian National University,
   
• Initials appearing in-text 
  The same author is appearing in your EndNote Library with multiple naming conventions. To fix this, simply go through your library and make sure the author field is the same for all publications: eg. Stephen Ball and Stephen J. Ball are the same person - use one or the other in all references. 
   
• Changes to references aren't showing in the document 
  Go to the EndNote menu in Word and select 'Update Citations and Bibliography'.