The very first steps towards a plugin for Microsoft Word are done and we thought we’d give you an early preview. It’s the first alpha and has some known bugs, but most of the time it does the job.
Known issues (which will be fixed in the next releases) are:
- Large download filesize (14.4MB)
- Several Microsoft run-time environments are being installed before the Word plugin is installed
- The plugin will only work for the user who installed it
- Removing documents from your Mendeley library which you have cited in your Word document causes blank citations
- Standard undo doesn’t work as expected after Mendeley action (eg. changing the citation style of bibliography: undo changes back each entry one by one instead of all at once)
You can download the plugin on our download page. We would really appreciate your feedback and bug-reports to improve the plugin for our next release!


October 26th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
[...] Large download filesize (14.4MB); Several Microsoft run-time environments are being installed before the Word plugin is installed; The plugin will only work for the user who installed it; Removing documents from your Mendeley library … Mendeley Word plugin alpha 0.1 released [...]
October 26th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
How does the plugin compare to the one from Zotero? Do you collaborate with Zotero on the word-processor plugins?
http://www.zotero.org/documentation/microsoft_word_integration
Best
Anders
October 27th, 2008 at 11:09 am
How about a plugin for openoffice?
October 27th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Hi Thomas – the plugin for OpenOffice is planned and will definitely come (probably in late November/early December)! We’ll start working on it right after the Word plugin has been polished a bit more.
Anders: Our Word plugin does everything the Zotero plugin does (but we tried to simplify the interface) – except for, in this alpha release, custom edits in the reference list. We didn’t collaborate with Zotero on the Word plugin because, as far as I know, their Word plugin is not open source?
Update: My mistake – as Bruce D’Arcus has pointed out to me, Zotero’s Word plugin is indeed open source.
February 25th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
There’s this:
https://www.zotero.org/trac/browser/integration/vba/trunk
which seems to be the VBA source for their plugin. However, VBA may or may not work on the Mac, depending on the version.
February 25th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Hi Mike,
thanks for the pointer! Our next Word plugin release (out next week with the new Mendeley Desktop release) will also be in VBA.
Best,
Victor
March 2nd, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Any plans for a Word for Mac/OSX plugin?
March 2nd, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Hi Shane,
yes, there are plans – but our first look into the issue seemed to suggest that we would have to completely rewrite our new VBA plugin in Python to make it work on Word for Mac. Perhaps I’m wrong; we’ll give it more attention after the next release (due at the beginning of next week). In any case, I unfortunately can’t give you an estimate yet!
Best,
Victor
March 15th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Please, please give us a plugin for OSX Pages / Word for mac – you have an amazing tool here and the ability to cite on the go on the mac would be great!
Thanks
John Paul
May 15th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
I second (or third?) the plea for a Word plugin for Mac OSX. Not to be pushy, but has any progress been made on that front?
May 19th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
I’m also interested in a plug-in for word on a Mac.
May 26th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
Another request for a Mac Office plugin. Everything is perfect, save that one need.
July 2nd, 2009 at 4:49 pm
What, no Mac Word plugin! Just as i was about to start writing!
That makes mendeley unusable for me which is too bad. was perfect otherwise.
Seriously though, you might consider prioritising that. I’d say the mac users share among academics will be higher than usual. that’s a substantial minority you’re excluding.
August 5th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Also would love to know if you’re going to create a Mac OSX Word plugin – could you give us an update? Thanks!
August 5th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Hey guys, sorry for letting you wait for the Mac plugin for such a long time. All client developers are busy working on general bug-fixes, stability, and the overall performance of Mendeley Desktop at the moment. But it is definitely on our list with a high priority – we are planning to begin working on it around start/mid September. We’ll keep you posted.
October 9th, 2009 at 3:23 am
Hello,
Has there been any progress on this?
Thanks
(admin could you please email me and let me know?)
November 30th, 2009 at 12:06 am
Please can we get an update on the progress for a macOS word plugin, since as you can see there are lots of people waiting for it, and I wouldn’t want to go back to EndNote or Reference Manager, just because of this one thing! We beg you to get one out asap – would make an awesome Christmas present!!!
December 5th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Any rough idea of timeframe for a mac/Word integration? Are we looking at days / weeks / months?
Appreciate mac user aren’t a majority but this seems like a must have feature for a product like this.
Otherwise A+
December 5th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Sorry for the delay of the Mac Word Plugin but there were quite a few issues with the other plugins cropping up which needed to be fixed first. There is no sense in having multiple plugins out there which are all too buggy to work with. But let me assure you that the Mac Plugin has high priority here and work on it has started.
If everything works well we should have an alpha version out there in January – a late Christmas present so to say. If you want early access to it and help us shaping the way it works please send a message to support@mendeley.com saying that you would like to apply for “Mac Word Plugin Alpha Testing”. We really appreciate your help and patience.
January 13th, 2010 at 8:47 pm
any progress yet, its January? plugin for mac?
January 14th, 2010 at 10:37 am
Happy to say we made very good progress and will release a first version shortly – hopefully next week. It’s still being tested internally.
January 17th, 2010 at 5:28 pm
Word-plugin for mac…I cannot wait! Thanks so much for the efforts Paul!
January 20th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
The first version of the Mac Word plugin is now included in the latest dev build which we’ve released yesterday: http://www.mendeley.com/download-mendeley-desktop. Potentially a bit rough around the edges and the dialogs need re-wording for better understanding but we will get there. Would be great to hear your feedback.
January 24th, 2011 at 7:25 pm
Is there a reason I can’t enter a citation via the citation key in the plugin? Also, I use ‘Alt-m’ to bring up the prompt, but can’t seem to hit ‘OK’ without the cursor. I can ‘tab’ over to it, but pressing ‘enter’ doesn’t do anything.
January 29th, 2011 at 12:30 am
Nick, this sounds like a bug. Would you contact support@mendeley.com so we can get this fixed?