1.      Manage Your Articles with Zotero: Your first step to making your life easier is to get yourself set up with Zotero, which will allow you to manage the articles that you find, collect them into folders, export them into bibliographies. You can go to https://www.zotero.org/ to download this free citation manager. Note that it is a TWO STEP process to download Zotero. You must first download the app (1), and then download the browser extension for the browser you want to use (2). 

Screenshot of Zotero.org/download, indicating the two steps that must be taken to fully download Zotero.

2. Confirm the Microsoft Word Plug-In has Installed: Once you have Zotero loaded, open up Microsoft Word and verify that the Zotero add-in is available. You will likely need to restart Word if you already had it open while you were downloading the plug-ins. Note that the add-in my look different or be in a different menu depending on which version of MS Word you are running and whether you are on a Mac or PC. Poke around if you can't find it! Look under 'tools' or for Mac users, check the little 'scroll' icon. 

3. Go to Zotero.org and register for a free account.

4. Enter your new account credentials into Zotero: go to the 'edit' menu in your Zotero app (NOTE- may appear in the 'Zotero' menu for Mac users), go into the Preferences menu, select the 'Sync' menu, and ensure that your username and password are filled in so that your library will automatically sync.