Mendeley

Open Mendeley Reference Manager from the start menu. If prompted, log in with your Mendeley account. On a Desktop@UCL PC you should choose to ignore any windows offering updates.

You might be presented with a window prompting you to download the Web Importer and / or the Word plugin (Mendeley Cite). If you have not already installed these, follow the on-screen instructions. These tools will allow you to use Mendeley to its full functionality.

The left-hand pane shows options for organising your library. Here you will find groups and folders for All References, Recently Added references and Favourites (smart collections).

Under COLLECTIONS, you will see any collections you create to organise your references. Further down you will see GROUPS, for any private groups you join or create. At the top, left corner you will see some menus for performing tasks such as exporting references, searching for articles and more. There is also a link to help pages.

Use the Notebook button on the toolbar, to open your Notebook, where you may store notes and PDF annotations relating to a particular reference, or a number of references together.

The central pane - called the Library table - displays all of the references in your selected collection or group. In the top right of this pane is a search box, to search your Mendeley library. If no references have been added, this section will be empty. To the right of this is a Filter option, which allows you to filter your library by either author or tag:

If you select a reference, single or multiple, by clicking in the check box(es) to the left, this brings up the Action panel:

Using the Action panel, you can add or remove references to /from a collection or group, mark as a favourite (or unmark), export or delete (to Trash).

If you select one of your displayed references, by highlighting it (not clicking in the check box to the left), this brings up the Info panel, in which you can view the full details and metadata for the reference, including PDF (if attached), abstract, and tag(s).

Use the Annotations tab to see all sticky notes (annotations) you have added to the selected PDF.

Use the Notebook tab, to write notes or copy highlighted text from PDFs, including the selected one.

At the top, right corner of the central pane, is a search box which you can use to find references within your own library.

To search your entire library, make sure All References is selected in the left hand menu. If you want to search only those references in a particular collection, select that collection.

• Enter your search terms(s) into the Search box and click on the magnifying glass icon to return references in your library which contain the term(s) in their document details (not the full text of PDF papers). 
• Search acts as a filter, and to display All references again, you will need to remove the filter, by clicking on the 'X' to the right of the search terms (in the Search box).
• If you want to find all references with a particular author or tag, this can be done by clicking on the Filters option in the top, right corner.  Select either Authors or Tags via the two tabs; this will return just the references with the selected author or tag. You can filter further by adding additional author names or tags. Turn off the filter(s) by clicking on the 'X' to the right of the filter or click on Clear filters.