The first thing to do when you install Mendeley is to upload all of your existing work to Mendeley.  

Creating bibliographic records from pdfs

If you have any pdfs on your computer you can create pdfs really easily.  Save them all to one folder and then in Mendeley click on Add and then  Add Folder.

Mendeley Add Folder

Select the folder you wish to add and then click on Okay.  Your bibliographic records and your pdfs will then appear in Mendeley.  You can repeat this proces for individual files.

Importing an Individual reference from iFind

Find an article you wish to import.

Select Actions and then Export to RIS (highlighted below).

Mendeley Citation in iFInd screenshot

An Import to Citation Manager window opens.

   UTF-8 Download

Click on DOWNLOAD.

RIS file to export

Drag and Drop the RIS file into the All Documents Pane in Mendeley.

Importing a Reference from an Academic Database

You are also able to add references from the majority of our academic databases. Please note that each Database works slightly differently.  When you have found an article that you wish to add to your references look for the Cite this link (or similar).

You then need to select the Format you wish to download. In this example (above)  it is BibTex. Sometimes you will see RIS. In Elsevier products such as ScienceDirect you will see Export to Mendeley. Select and then click on Download article citation data.

Drag and drop file into Mendeley All Documents pane.

Attaching a PDF to your References

At this point you have created a reference to your library. You are also able to attach the PDF of the article to your library.  To do this:

Select the article. In the details pane click on Add File…

The Mendeley Attach Files window will open. Select the file you wish to add and click on Open. The PDF will then be attached to your citation entry.