Once you have your documents in Mendeley, you can cite and reference them within Word and OpenOffice by installing plug-ins.  Once installed, you will have tool bar buttons that will allow you to cite a document, generate a bibliography, or manually edit any entry.

Go to Tools > Install... and select the plugin you wish to add. 

• When creating a paper, click on Insert Citation in the toolbar to cite a document from your Mendeley Library.
   

• If you are using Word on Windows, a box will appear allowing you to search for references by author, title or year (note that this is only available for Microsoft Word for Windows at the moment; for Word on Mac or OpenOffice, skip ahead to the second-to-last step).
   

 

• When you find the reference you want to cite, click OK and you're done.  You can cite multiple references by using semicolons to separate them.
• If you prefer to find references using Mendeley Desktop, press the "Go to Mendeley" button beneath the search box, which brings up Mendeley Desktop.  Then select the document in Mendeley Desktop, and click Send Citation to MS Word (or OpenOffice). Again, you can cite multiple documents.  Just hold the Ctrl key and left click the documents you want to cite. 
   

 

• Your citation will be sent to your word processor.  You can select your preferred citation style in the drop down menu in your word processor.  
• Now you can generate a bibliography by clicking Insert Bibliography.