Getting Started with PDF Annotating in Mendeley Reference Manager

Mendeley Reference Manager allows you to annotate and highlight PDFs that are uploaded into your Mendeley library. You can tell which files have PDFs uploaded by whether or not they have a green check in the 'File' column. Files are not automatically downloaded, so in order to annotate a PDF, you may have to first click the download icon. If no file is present, you can attach a PDF. 

Mendeley Library with 'File' column highlighted

To open a PDF file, click on the green check. This will open a new tab within Mendeley with the PDF displayed. You can then use the icons in the Annotations toolbar at the top of the page to highlight, leave notes, etc. To navigate back to your library, click the 'Library' button in the upper left hand corner of the page.

Open PDF with Editing tool bar features and highlighting applied to portions of the PDF text

For additional help and more information, see Mendeley's Help Page on annotating PDFs in Mendeley Reference Manager.

Getting Started with PDF Annotating in Mendeley Desktop

Mendeley allows you to annotate and highlight PDFs that are uploaded into your Mendeley library. Once a PDF is uploaded, click on the PDF icon that appears next to the reference. 

Circled PDF Icon to the left of the citation title

This will open a new tab within Mendeley with the PDF displayed. You can then use the icons in the Annotations toolbar at the top of the page to highlight, leave notes, etc. To navigate back to your library, click the 'My Library' tab underneath the Annotation toolbar.

Annotation tools highlighted in the PDF view

For additional help and more information about annotating PDFs in Mendeley, click here.