LibGuides: EndNote: Creating Groups

Managing your references

Rather than having multiple EndNote Libraries, it's better to organise your references by using groups and group sets. These are EndNote's way of filing your references in a way that make sense to you.

A group set is a top level folder which you can use to organise your references at a high level, such as by research project or unit of study.

A group is a sub folder that can sit within a group set, where you can sort your references on a more granular level, such as by theme, chapter, or assignment.

EndNote also allows you to create smart groups. These are groups that are automatically populated by EndNote based on a set of criteria decided by you. You could sort these groups by date, title, author, journal, keyword and much more. Smart groups can be useful if you're importing lots of references at once, as they will automatically be sorted into groups according to your criteria as you add them.

For more information on creating groups and group sets, see the video below or scroll down for step by step instructions.

Creating Groups

You can use Groups to arrange references in ways that are meaningful to you. However, EndNote allows you to also create Group-Sets to organise your groups. Your groups and group sets will appear in the left-hand panel in EndNote under My Groups.

To create a new group set:

Click on the groups menu
select create group set
a new group set will appear in the left hand panel
give it a name that is meaningful to you
to add a group to the group set either click and drag a group onto the group set or click on the group set name and create a new group from the groups menu

When the list is collapsed, the number next to the Group Set header reflects the total number of references found in each group. This number could include duplicates (references that are included in more than one group).

To create a group:

Go to the Groups menu and select 'Create Group'
A new group will appear in the left-hand sidebar
Give your group a name that is meaningful to you
Drag and drop selected references from All References (or from another group) to your new Group.

Individual references can be both dragged into groups and deleted from groups. They will always remain in All References until deleted from there. You can drag-and-drop the new group to any custom Group Set.

Smart Groups are groups that are automatically populated by EndNote based on your pre-determined criteria. You can set your own criteria for how references are sorted into Smart Groups, such as by date, author, keyword, and more.

To create a Smart Group:

Click on the Groups menu.
Select Create Smart Group.
A dialog box will appear.
Enter a name for the Group
Use the dropdowns in the dialogue box to enter your criteria, then click Create.

The new Smart Group will be added to your Groups panel, and all references that meet your criteria will immediately appear in that Smart Group. As new citations are added to your library, they will be sorted into your smart groups automatically if they meet the criteria.