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Mendeley (Workshop)

Links, examples and materials to accompany a Mendeley workshop.

Annotating PDFs

Opening a PDF in Mendeley, displays the annotation menu bar (explained from left to right).

Screen capture showing location of items listed below

  • Arrow: Click this to select text to 
    • Copy & Paste
    • Highlight
  • Hand: known as the pan tool.  Use this tool to navigate around the document.
  • Pencil: Click this to choose your highlight tool
    • Pencil: used to highlight one or more words (default setting)
    • Rectangle: used to highlight a rectangle (perhaps an image, figure or table)
  • Speech bubble with text: this is a sticky note
    • Write comments on the PDF in your own words. 
  • Coloured circle: Displays the highlight or sticky note colour.
    • change colour (if using) before highlighting or creating a sticky note.
  • Page / Pages: indicates which page of the document you are on and how many pages are in the document
  • View: allows you to select how the document is viewed
    • Fit document to screen width (default)
    • Fit document to screen height
  • Magnifying glass (with symbol inside)
    • plus (+) = Zoom in
    • minus (-) = Zoom out
  • Circle with arrow: allows you to rotate the page you are on clockwise
  • Box with a downward arrow: allows you to download the document
  • Magnifying glass: allows you to search the document and it's annotations.
  • Info: shows you the details or metadata about the article.

Notebook

You can use the Mendeley Notebook to help you to organize highlighted quotations across multiple PDFs.

  1. Create a Notebook page by selecting the spiral notebook button in the left black side bar. 
  2. The Notebook menu will open on the right of the screen.  Click + New Page to create a new notebook page.
  3. Click on Title your page...
  4. Type in a title for your page
  5. Click on Start typing... to start typing in notes for your page.
  6. To add highlights to the notebook
    1. Open the PDF you want.
    2. Select and highlight the text you want to add to the notebook.
    3. Click on the highlighted text.
    4. Click Add to Notebook.
    5. Choose the notebook page you want to add the highlighted text to.