Cool Tools: Word 2007
The Office 2007 Suite has improvements sprinkled throughout; one of my favorites is one that’s long overdue. For all the academics out there, I’d like to explore the Citation and Bibliography tools in Word 2007. For the last 10 years, creating a running bibliography has been a complete labor – the new Citation and Bibliography tools are a great addition.
First, adding a new reference to a document: instead of typing it directly onto the page, you place information into a running bibliography file, and a document field is inserted at the place you need your reference. Click the References tab, and select Insert Citation. If you’ve already inserted a reference to a document of some kind, you’ll see it listed there. If you need a new reference document, you’ll see Add New Source to create a new listing.
Choose Add New Source, and fill in the information about your reference material.
Once this is complete, you can insert the citation as often as you like.
The interesting thing about this is that all references you create are added to a master list, which you can use to bring in repeated references from earlier documents you create. In fact, you can manage the master list, removing references and bringing them into documents, by clicking Manage Sources in the References ribbon.
Finally, you can add a bibliography – simply by clicking Bibliography, choosing the type of bibliography you’d like to add, and voila!
The killer part of this tool that I absolutely love is this – I always found myself having to go back and use a different style of reference after I’d written my document. If I had chosen MLA style, the request would be for Chicago, and vice versa. It always involved me scrolling through my document slowly and making edits. Now, however, you just have to choose the drop-down menu for Style, and choose the style you like. All your citations are immediately changed to reflect the appropriate style.
Do learn more about Word 2007 and the Citations and Bibliographies group of the References Ribbon, take our Word 2007 course. It’s guaranteed to show you tools you never knew existed – and tools that will make your job easier.
