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Check that the RCM toolbar appears in MS Word.

• In the grey ribbon bar at the top of MS Word, you should see an option for "RCM."  
• You may also see the option "RefWorks" (that's old Write-n-Cite) and you might also see "RCM - RefWorks" - please prefer plain RCM if available as it is most current. 
• If you do NOT have the option "RCM" in Word, please go to the RCM tab (left) for instructions on how to find your Add-Ins in Word.

Prepare your document(s)

1. Save a back up copy of the document in original format.
2. Open the original document in Word and turn off ”Track Changes”. E.g. go to the Review ribbon bar and “Accept all changes and stop tracking” or whatever option you prefer.  Documents should not have comments or markup in use during the upgrade.
3. TABLES: citations embedded in tables are a known problem for the RCM upgrade.  Citations in tables work fine in RCM, but they will not auto-upgrade using this process. See the bottom of this page for solution ideas.
4. Check in Write-n-Cite (RefWorks ribbon bar) for the correct Account & Project. If you will be doing a large number of documents, ensure that you work on a set all from the same Account & Project together.
5. Remove bibliography: upgrade may be smoother if the bibliography is first removed from the Write-n-Cite document. 

Organize: 1 email, 1 project

Upgrade all the documents for one user account (email) at a time

Upgrade the documents for one Project at a time. When you have finished with one Project's documents, you will need to switch the active Project in both Write-n-Cite and in RCM. 

• Refworks accounts = 1 email address. Some users might have different emails running different RefWorks accounts.
• Projects = separate workspaces, multiple users. Many users are part of additional Projects e.g. for research, education, or working groups.  Different Projects have different references, so the Project matters.

A MS Word document can only link to one user account and one Project. If you have multiple Projects (or multiple emails / user accounts!), divide your documents according to the Project (and user email) they are linked with. If you are in the wrong account or the wrong Project, your Upgrade will fail. 

Upgrade your document(s)

1. Log in to Write-n-Cite in the correct account for your document.
2. Click on the RCM ribbon tab – log in using the SAME RefWorks account and project as in Write-n-Cite.
3. The side panel should open with the following message: “This document contains references or data that were added using Write-n-Cite (WnC).”
4. Review the “Am I ready to upgrade?” points.
5. Click on the “Upgrade this document” button then click on OK. 

Complex Documents: Additional Steps

You may wish to close all other MS Office documents & programs to speed up the processing.

1. Begin from a standard RW citation style (not a personal or customized style)
2. In Write-n-Cite, remove the bibliography (displayed in the document). Only remove (hide) the bibliography, do not remove "Field Codes" - the codes are needed to do the conversion.
3. In Review, Accept all changes and stop tracking
4. Delete all comments (that’s a single button to delete all)
5. Use Alt-F9 to display codes, then “Find” {{}} , to locate “empty” RW codes and delete them
6. Check each table for embedded references, copy  the reference to a note below the table, then delete the RW code from the table.

After this cleaned document has been saved, use the upgrade process to translate references to RCM. Double check function. Then move references back to preferred in-table locations if desired.

Troubleshooting tips & notes for BC Cancer  are in the box to the right.

Upgrade errors you might see: 

• References embedded inside tables: Message is “Unable to upgrade”, with no details or reasons. See Tables Options below for more ideas. 

• Missing references: you may get the “Upgrade successful” message in RCM, and THEN an “Invalid citations found” error. The locations in the document with unlinked citations are highlighted, however, it does not display which citations weren’t found. You may need to compare the WnC version of the document, to the RCM version, to discover which references will need to be fixed / re-linked to your RefWorks account.

• NOTE re: fixing missing references in WnC: if an entry in WnC does not find a match in your RefWorks data, it will show up in the Edit screen as “New Reference” i.e. a blank line.  Use the minus sign ( - ) to remove that problem entry instead of deleting the displayed text in the Word document.

• Track Changes can also cause Upgrade and RCM issues. It's recommended to "Accept all changes and STOP tracking" in Word before  upgrading your document.

• Multiple errors in the same document, the upgrader does not offer details – it will fail to upgrade but the reasons may not be given. Check the linked article and consider if any of the specific errors might be possible.

Tables in MS Word: Options

References in tables do work in both Write-n-Cite and in RCM. It's the UPGRADE which does not.

• The BC Cancer Library understands that these are complex documents. We have not tested these options.
• Option 1: Move your table-embedded citations to before or after the table in order to upgrade, and then move them back to their spot after upgrading and testing your new document.  Formatting will be preserved, but locating and moving all references twice will take some manual time.
• Option 2: Convert tables-to-text in Word to temporarily remove the table structure. Do the upgrade to RCM without the tables.  Then use the "Convert text to table" function in Word to rebuild the table.  Test the double conversion process before doing this for a large complex document.  Some formatting will need to be re-created.
• Option 3: Consider permanently moving the linked codes out of the tables and instead using manual references (typed)  in the tables, and generating a static bibliography for the References at the end of the document.

Word documents made with Write-n-Cite can be auto-upgraded to RCM.  But is it necessary?

No, you do not need to upgrade the following things:

• Documents with no RefWorks links / bibliography in them
• Documents that are finished, with no future editing required, e.g. journal articles already published
• Bibliographies pasted directly from RefWorks (without Write-n-Cite)

Yes, you need to upgrade:

• Ongoing documents which will continue to have references added, changed, or removed
• Documents not quite complete, e.g. submitted journal articles which are not yet finalized
• If it might be edited in 2025, you need to upgrade it.

What if we do not upgrade a WnC Document?

Word Documents created with WnC will still open and can be edited. However, the Write-n-Cite toolbar will no longer exist, so you will not be able to connect to your RefWorks account to change any citations or the style.  No RefWorks tools will be available if the document hasn't been upgraded. 

Solutions:

1. Just go through and replace each old citation link with new RCM entries.  You will need to find and re-enter each reference, so that the bibliography is complete. Delete the old WnC entries.
2. Or, if the document is very small or simple, just generate the citations you need inside RefWorks and copy/paste those into your document. You will need to manually re-order the citations properly.

Known upgrade issues – also see notes in the Errors section (on the left)

Document has references but are not connecting to any RefWorks account

• Check the original owner of the Word document. Some collaborators used other citation managers, and those will not automatically be converted to any RefWorks coding in Word.  
• Write-n-Cite references are linked to the person (BC Cancer username / email) that originally put them in the Word document. If that was not you, you may not be able to upgrade to RCM properly. If the person who created the references is no longer at BC Cancer, we might need help from RefWorks support team to upgrade your document.  PLEASE ASK FOR THIS HELP ASAP if it is a critical document.

Issues Reported but not yet solved (Dec 12, 2024)

• RCM button 'greyed out' in some documents 
• WnC document links correctly, but RCM does not prompt for a conversion
• "New RCM add-in available" : we do know what this is, and have a ticket with IMITS to fix it.  Click "Remind me later" for now.

Both RCM and Write-n-Cite: 

• WARNING : RCM and the Write-n-Cite “Refworks” toolbar do not auto-synchronize. They potentially could be logged in to different RefWorks accounts or projects from each other. 
• Having entries from one app doesn’t block entries from the other app.  If a single document has entries from both RCM and also WnC, either the document might refuse to format properly, or it might create two bibliographies, one for each app, or just one bibliography and all of the entries from the “other” app will be missing.
• In 2025 WnC will not connect anymore, and documents edited from then on will only have RCM entries.  In the meantime, users should not use WnC after upgrading their documents to RCM, to avoid multiple app entries.