Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated December 27, 2025)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Word in Microsoft 365
Ivan has a 35-page document that includes just over 175 footnotes. The citations in each footnote were created in Chicago style, but he just found out that he needs to convert them to APA style. Ivan wonders if there is an easy way to do this.
Getting citations in the correct style is one of the most detailed, arduous tasks involved in creating an academic paper. For instance, in the Chicago Manual of Style (eighteenth edition), the chapters comprising the rules and examples for formatting citations occupy 178 pages. That's a lot to understand and get your head around.
Because of complexity such as this, there is no automatic (aka "easy") way to do such a style conversion in Word. There are some online tools that might help, though. Ones such as CiteThisForMe.com and Scribbr.com may be helpful, but you would still need to copy and paste each Chicago citation into the tool and then paste the APA version back into the footnote. Each citation would need to go through this copy-and-paste round trip, plus you will need to double-check each converted citation to make sure nothing went awry.
Like I said, this is not an easy process. If you decide to go through the process, you may want to keep two versions of your final paper—one using Chicago citations and one using APA citations.
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2026-01-03 09:00:07
Allen
@R. Paquette,
I didn't mention the references tab because of work I do for an academic publisher. They publish all of their papers using InDesign, so Word is the "first step" of a paper used by an author and editor. Those authors who use Word's references tab ALWAYS have problems at the typesetting stage. The reason is because the references are implemented, by Microsoft, through the use of fields. The fields don't "play well" when it comes to importing into InDesign.
My conclusion has always been that the references tab is good, provided the document isn't destined for a post-Word life. Otherwise, it is a lot of work for the author (and source checkers) to create an absolute nightmare for typesetters.
I'd be interested if others have experienced the same.
-Allen
2026-01-03 04:30:45
R. Paquette
@Timothy J. McGowan. I was not referring to styles. I was referring to the references tab in Word. It is a powerful tool for academic papers. You choose your style - APA, Chicago, Harvard, etc. - from the drop down menu, add a reference by filling in the fields (book, journal, periodical, etc.) and Word formats the citations for you. It does inline citations and at the end of the paper you can then generate a Bibliography.
See https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/add-citations-in-a-word-document-ab9322bb-a8d3-47f4-80c8-63c06779f127
2025-12-29 08:49:44
Timothy J. McGowan
@R. Paquette:
An easy mistake to make, but Word styles have nothing to do with Chicago vs. APA styles.
APA may underline the title of a work where Chicago italicizes it or puts it in quotation marks. They may differ also in the ordering of elements, such as whether the name of the work or the author comes first. As Allen notes, 178 pages' worth of persnicketiness.
More, for those who might be interested:
https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html
https://apastyle.apa.org/
2025-12-27 04:33:13
R. Paquette
If Ivan had used the references tab to record each citation, then converting from Chicago to APA would be easy! This is also essential if you wish to automatically generate a bibliography at the end of your academic paper. To change styles in the references tab, choose a new style from the drop down menu. Then update the document.
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