Feature update (18 September 2018)

Please note this post describes the behaviour of Mendeley in Overleaf v1. With the release of Overleaf v2 on 4 September 2018, Mendeley became a paid feature; consequently, the content of this post is now obsolete and is retained for historic interest only.

You can now link a Group on Mendeley to a .bib file on Overleaf! This is a great way for coauthors to manage a shared collection of references for their papers on Overleaf. This has been one of the most popular requests we've had since we launched the first beta of our integration with Mendeley, so we're very pleased to say it's now ready.

To see how it works, check out the illustrated guide below.

Import References from a Mendeley Group into Overleaf

From the Project menu in the editor select Add files -> Add bibliography, which brings up the bibliography import screen:

The first time you do this, you’ll be prompted to connect your Mendeley account with your Overleaf account:

And then to authorize this on the Mendeley website:

Once the accounts are linked, you will have the option of either importing your whole library (if you don't select a Group) or only a specific Group. You can also choose the name of the .bib file in your Overleaf project that will be linked to your Mendeley library or group.

To import a group, select it from the dropdown or search by the group name. In this example, the group name is "Reflect!".

Once the file has been uploaded into the project, you can use it with BibTeX in the usual way:

If you add more references to your Mendeley library or Group, you can refresh the link to pull in the new .bib content (and the file can also be refreshed via the project menu).

Alternatively, if you type \cite, we will auto-complete the citation keys for you:

The same feature is available in our Rich Text mode:

Happy (BiB)TeXing!