Given how many referencing styles are available, manually applying any particular system can be time consuming and prone to errors.  Although there are reference generator websites available but most of them still require editing in some way or other.  Here is how you can enable Word to automatically add a referencing style to your document.

Manage Sources

Firstly, you need to add the source of your referencing style into Word’s memory.  You can do this by selecting the References tab, and clicking on Insert Citation à Add New Source.  This opens the Create Source dialog box in which you need to enter as much information about the piece of text that uses the Harvard Referencing style that you want to apply, as possible.  This can come from a book, journal, website etc.

To apply the Harvard Referencing into your document, Select the References tab/menu option and click on the Manage Sources option.  This opens the Source Managerdialog box where, on the left hand side you will see a ‘Master List’ that includes all of the titles you have entered – you should see the one you just added.  You need to select the one/s you want to use from your Master List, and copy them over into your Current List (on the right hand side).  Click OK to close the dialog box.

Now, when you are in your document and you click Insert Citation you will see everything you have added to your Current List.  You can double click the source that you want to use, and it will appear in your text.  This of course can still be edited.

You can also use this function for your reference list or bibliography, at the end of your piece of work.  In the References tab, select the Bibliography option and click on either:

• Bibliograhy for a complete list of everything on your Current List in the Sources Manager  OR
• Works Cited for just the texts you used in your work.

Using Styles with a Plug-In

In many recent versions of Word, styles such as APA and Ghost are already preset and available to select but unfortunately, Harvard Referencing, isn’t included.  One way to overcome this is by using the Bibwordwhich is available from their website.  The file you want is the one called ‘styles.zip’.  You need to download it and extract the files.  For this to work with Word, you must copy the styles into the Microsoft Word bibliography style directory the location of which, depends on where Word was installed.  Usually with Word 2007 or 2010 it will either be located in <winword.exe directory>\Bibliography\Style or %programfiles%\Microsoft Office\Office12\Bibliography\Style.

Now, when you select Styles from the References tab, ‘Harvard’ should appear in the list.

Bio – Hollie Miller

Hollie provides Microsoft Word Training for Acuity Training. In her spare time she loves to go to the gym and dress making.