Using your Mendeley library after you have left Cranfield

So you have spent the whole year (or more) lovingly collecting references around the topics that matter to you and now you have a large, personalised library in Mendeley Reference Manager containing all that information.

To make sure that you can still access your Mendeley library and references after you leave Cranfield, complete these simple steps before you go.

Note: You will also lose access to your Cranfield OneDrive when you leave, so make sure to back up any work you wish to keep and a copy of your thesis to your own personal device!

To keep access to your Mendeley account

If you want to keep using Mendeley then all you need to do is

1. Log into your Mendeley account as usual, and click on your account (your initials from the bottom left of your library, or from the top right in the main Mendeley welcome screen) and navigate to ‘account settings’.
2. Edit the ‘email address’ field from your Cranfield one to a personal email address.
3. You will also be prompted to change your password, so do so, then click ‘Update’.

From then on you should be able to log into Mendeley using these new details and access all the same references, PDFs, notes and folders as you had previously.

To stop using Mendeley but keep your references

If you decide you don’t want to continue using Mendeley but want to keep your references, perhaps to import into a different reference management tool, then this is also possible.

This method copies your references but will NOT copy any associated PDF files, notes or annotations you have made. The PDFs will need to be saved separately.

1. Sign into your Mendeley library
2. From your All References folder, tick the checkbox at the top of the library to select all your references.
3. From the menu which appears at the bottom of the screen choose ‘Export’ and select the file format you want (we strongly recommend selecting RIS Research Information Systems to save a .ris file).

A file will be saved which you can then keep for use with other reference managers (choose the import option to add the file to your chosen reference management software)

Saving a complete reference list to a Word document

You can also copy a formatted reference list of all your references into Word if you wish. Although this will not contain the rich data of the records stored in reference managers, a reference list may be a nice reminder of the references you collected.

1. From your All References folder, tick the checkbox at the top of the library to select all your references.
2. From the menu which appears at the bottom of the screen, choose ‘Copy as’
3. Check the citation style is the format you want and change this is necessary
4. Then click ‘Formatted citations’ (this copies your whole list)
5. Next, in a blank MS Word document select ‘Paste’ (Ctrl + V) to paste a list of all the references in your Mendeley library.

Closing your Mendeley account

You have the option of closing your Mendeley account entirely if you are finished with it; do this from your account settings page.