Why do I need to update my Mendeley Desktop Word plugin document to work with Mendeley Cite?

Existing citations created with the Mendeley Desktop plugin are built using an old technology that is not compatible with Mendeley Cite. These citations have to be updated to start working with Mendeley Cite.

Microsoft made a decisions to stop supporting the technology that the Mendeley Desktop citation plugin was built upon (as well as many other popular reference managers) in the modern versions of Microsoft Word, such as Office 365, Word 2019+ and online versions of Word.

We made the decision to build Mendeley Cite using Microsoft's newer and preferred technology, where add-ins must published through the AppSource store. This new technology gives us the ability to build additional tools that we previously couldn't, but it also means that users can now use our citation software on Office 365, online versions of Word, Word 2019+ and now also Word for iPad.

We have built the update process to ensure that we validate all processes are successful before any changes are made, but there are always external issues that can occur during a conversion process which we cannot detect.

Unfortunately, Mendeley Cite is unable to save instances of back-up Word documents. Mendeley Cite is only able to access the content within the body of a document. We are restricted to only access your current working document and are not able to control things such as saving, creating or cloning documents from within the add-in pane. Therefore we require users to back-up their own documents before we update your document.