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I'm finishing my master's thesis in psychology and my advisor just told me I need to reformat all my references to the latest APA 7th Edition citation guidelines. I thought I was familiar with APA, but the changes regarding DOIs, website references, and multiple authors are tripping me up. Specifically, I'm confused about when to use "et al." for in-text citations now and how to properly cite a dataset I retrieved from an online repository. For others who have recently made this transition, are there any good online checklists or tools you used to ensure consistency? I'm worried about missing a subtle rule and having my submission rejected on a technicality.

APA 7 basics: use et al for three or more authors in text.

DOIs should appear as a live link if possible. If not use the repository URL. For datasets cite the author or organization, the year, the title, version if any, the repository name and the DOI or dataset ID.

Two author in text citations should include both last names and the year after. For three or more authors use the first author et al and the year.

For online tools consider the APA Style website and the Purdue OWL as quick checklists. Use citation managers such as Zotero Mendeley or EndNote with APA 7 templates and run a final audit with a style checker.