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Mendeley Cite is a Microsoft Office add-in, not a plugin you download and run. It installs from inside Word itself, through the Office Add-ins Store, and it is a different piece of software from the older Mendeley Desktop Word plugin (sometimes still called “Mendeley for Word” in old forum posts and IT tickets). Elsevier has discontinued new-install distribution of the classic Mendeley Desktop application in favor of the web-based Mendeley Reference Manager and its companion add-in, Mendeley Cite — existing Desktop installs keep receiving maintenance fixes but no new features. If you are trying to reinstall “the Mendeley Word plugin” after a reformat or a new laptop, what you actually want in almost every current case is Mendeley Cite, and the steps below are for that.
This page covers installing Mendeley Cite, signing in, the managed/offline-desktop case IT departments run into, and the specific fixes for when the add-in doesn’t show up in Word after you’ve installed it.
What Mendeley Cite is (and isn’t)
Mendeley Cite is an Office Add-in — the same category as any tool listed in Microsoft’s Office Add-ins Store (also called AppSource). That matters practically: it doesn’t get installed by an .exe or .dmg you run once, it doesn’t need administrator rights on your own machine in the common case, and it runs as a task-pane inside Word rather than a toolbar of its own buttons. It reads your reference library live from your Mendeley web account (the same library Mendeley Reference Manager shows), not from a local Mendeley Desktop database — which is exactly why an old offline Desktop library needs to be synced to your Mendeley account before Cite can see it.
Mendeley Cite officially supports Microsoft Word only. It does not work with Google Docs — Elsevier’s own support documentation states this directly — so if your workflow is Google Docs, Mendeley Cite is not an option; you’d need to export citations manually or use a different reference manager with native Docs support (Zotero, for instance, has an official Google Docs plugin).
Before you install
- A free Mendeley/Elsevier account — the same sign-in you use for Mendeley Reference Manager or the Mendeley web library. If you don’t have one, create it at mendeley.com before installing the add-in; Cite’s sign-in screen won’t create an account for you.
- A Word version that supports Office Add-ins: Microsoft 365 (subscription) desktop Word, or a recent perpetual-license Word (2016 or later) with an internet connection. Office Add-ins are web-based components — Word needs to reach Microsoft’s and Elsevier’s servers to load and run one, so it will not work on a fully offline machine no matter how it was installed.
- Any references you want to cite already added to your Mendeley library (via the Reference Manager desktop/web app, the Mendeley Web Importer browser extension, or manual entry) — Cite inserts from that library, it does not import files of its own.
Installing Mendeley Cite from the Office Add-ins Store
- Open Word and go to the Insert tab.
- Click Get Add-ins (in newer Word builds this may read Add-ins, opening the same store).
- Search for Mendeley Cite.
- Click Add (or Add to Word). Word downloads and loads the add-in — no separate installer, no restart required in the normal case.
- A Mendeley Cite button appears on the References (or Insert) ribbon. Click it to open the task pane.
The exact wording of the Insert-tab button (“Get Add-ins” vs. “Add-ins” vs. “Office Add-ins”) varies by Word build and update channel — Microsoft has renamed this entry point more than once — but it is always reached from the Insert tab, and searching “Mendeley Cite” from inside it is the same action regardless of the label.
Signing in
The first time you open the Mendeley Cite task pane, it prompts you to sign in with your Mendeley/Elsevier account credentials — the same email and password (or SSO, where your institution has it configured through Elsevier’s identity provider) you use for Mendeley Reference Manager. Once signed in, Cite stays signed in on that machine until you explicitly sign out, and it syncs whatever library changes you make elsewhere (adding a paper on the web, tagging something in Reference Manager) the next time the task pane refreshes.
The managed or offline-desktop case
Two situations depart from the simple path above, and both come up constantly on institutionally managed machines:
- The Office Add-ins Store is blocked by IT policy. Many university and enterprise IT departments restrict which Office Add-ins users can self-install, for data-governance reasons. If Get Add-ins is greyed out, missing, or returns a permissions error, your organization needs to deploy Mendeley Cite centrally — an admin adds it through the Microsoft 365 admin center’s Integrated apps (or the legacy Centralized Deployment) settings, targeting specific users, groups, or the whole tenant. Once deployed that way, the add-in shows up automatically in affected users’ Word under My Add-ins ▸ Admin Managed — you don’t self-install it, you just open it from there. If you’re on a managed machine and self-install fails, this is the fix to request from IT, not a local repair.
- A genuinely offline or air-gapped machine. Because Mendeley Cite is a hosted, network-dependent add-in, there is no offline installer and no way to make it fully functional without connectivity — it needs to reach Elsevier’s servers to authenticate and to sync your library. If your work happens on a machine that’s disconnected for long stretches, plan around exporting a formatted bibliography (or an RIS/BibTeX file) while online rather than expecting Cite to work mid-session offline.
“Mendeley Cite isn’t showing up in Word” — fixes, in order
Try these roughly in order of effort — most people are solved by the first two.
1. Check My Add-ins, not just the ribbon
Insert ▸ My Add-ins lists everything installed, including anything an admin deployed for you under an Admin Managed section that isn’t automatically pinned to the ribbon. If Mendeley Cite is listed there but has no ribbon button, open it from this list directly, then pin it if Word offers the option.
2. Sign out and back in
A stale or expired sign-in session is the most common cause of the add-in appearing to be missing or blank rather than actually absent — the task pane can fail to render usefully without erroring clearly. Sign out from inside the Cite pane (if it opens at all) or remove and re-add the add-in, then sign back in.
3. Confirm you’re on a supported Word build
Office Add-ins require Word 2016 or later with an active internet connection; a genuinely old perpetual-license Word (2013 or earlier), or a Word installation with add-ins/telemetry locked down by group policy, can silently prevent the store — and anything installed through it — from loading at all.
4. Clear the Office web-add-in cache
Word caches web add-ins locally, and a corrupted cache entry is a known general cause of an installed Office Add-in failing to load without any error message. On Windows, closing Word and clearing the contents of %LOCALAPPDATA%MicrosoftOffice16.0Wef forces Word to re-fetch the add-in cleanly on next launch. This is a general Office Add-ins fix, not specific to Mendeley — the same folder trips up other add-ins from other vendors too.
5. Remove and reinstall
From Insert ▸ My Add-ins, remove Mendeley Cite, restart Word, then reinstall it from Get Add-ins as in the steps above. This resolves cases where the first install was interrupted (network drop mid-download, Word closed during setup) and left a partial, non-functional registration behind.
6. If you’re on a managed machine, ask IT before troubleshooting further
If none of the above applies and you’re on an institutional machine, the most likely remaining cause is a policy block (see the managed-desktop section above) rather than anything fixable from inside Word — confirm with your IT desk whether Office Add-ins are restricted before spending more time on local repairs.
If you’re migrating off the old Mendeley Desktop Word plugin
Because Mendeley Cite reads from your online Mendeley library rather than a local Desktop database, moving from the retired Desktop plugin to Cite isn’t a like-for-like swap — it’s a two-step move: first make sure your Mendeley Desktop library is fully synced to your Mendeley web account (Desktop still supports this even though it’s not receiving new features), then install and sign into Cite as above. Citations already inserted into an existing document with the old plugin are stored as Word fields tied to that plugin’s format; they will generally still display correctly, but editing them (inserting a new citation into the same document, changing the output style) is best done consistently with one tool rather than switching mid-document between the legacy plugin and Cite.
Frequently asked questions
Is Mendeley Cite free?
Yes — Mendeley Cite is included with a free Mendeley account; there is no separate charge for the add-in itself. Mendeley’s paid tiers relate to library storage, not to whether Cite works.
Does Mendeley Cite work with Google Docs?
No. Mendeley Cite officially supports Microsoft Word only, per Elsevier’s own support documentation. Unofficial third-party browser add-ons for Google Docs exist but are not Elsevier-supported and aren’t covered here.
Do I need Microsoft 365, or does a one-time-purchase Word work?
Either can work, as long as the Word version is 2016 or later and can reach the internet — Office Add-ins aren’t restricted to subscription Word specifically, but very old perpetual-license versions (2013 and earlier) don’t support the Add-ins Store at all.
Why does my library look empty in the Cite task pane even though it installed fine?
Cite shows your online Mendeley library, not a local file. If references you expect are missing, check that they were actually added to your Mendeley account (via Reference Manager, the Web Importer, or manual entry) rather than only ever existing in an old, unsynced Mendeley Desktop database.
What happened to the old Mendeley Word plugin?
It was the citation plugin bundled with Mendeley Desktop, which Elsevier has discontinued for new installs in favor of the web-based Mendeley Reference Manager and Mendeley Cite. Existing Desktop installations continue to receive maintenance fixes, but Cite is the actively developed path going forward.
For a broader look at how Mendeley compares to other reference managers on cost and features, see Zotero vs. Mendeley and the wider Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley, RefWorks and Paperpile comparison. If you use EndNote instead, the equivalent install walkthrough is installing EndNote’s Cite While You Write add-in.
