How to Cite a Source With No Date in APA 7

To cite a source with no date in APA 7, write "n.d." (for "no date") in the parentheses where the year would go, in both the reference list entry and the in-text citation. That is the core rule. The harder questions come before and after it: whether the page really has no date, which of the several dates on a webpage counts, and when APA also wants a retrieval date. This guide answers all three, with worked examples you can copy.

The Official APA 7 Rule for a Source With No Date

The APA Publication Manual (7th edition) handles missing information in Table 9.1 (Section 9.4, p. 284). When the date is missing, the instruction is to write "n.d." in place of the year. Every other element of the reference stays where it was.

Format:

Author, A. A. (n.d.). Title of work. Source. URL

Filled-in example (a webpage by an organization):

The Cornell Lab. (n.d.). Citizen science. https://www.birds.cornell.edu/citizenscience/

In-text, parenthetical: (The Cornell Lab, n.d.)

In-text, narrative: The Cornell Lab (n.d.) invites the public to...

Three formatting details matter, and all three show up as errors in real reference lists:

• "n.d." is lowercase with a period after each letter and no space between them. Write n.d., never N.D., n. d., or nd. It stays lowercase even directly after the opening parenthesis.
• The in-text citation must match the reference. If the reference says (n.d.), the in-text citation says (Author, n.d.). Writing a year in one place and n.d. in the other sends your reader looking for an entry that does not exist.
• Do not spell out "no date," leave the parentheses empty, or guess a year. The abbreviation is the rule, and an invented year is worse than an honest n.d.

First, Check Whether the Source Really Has No Date

Most sources that look undated have a date you have missed, the same way most "authorless" webpages have a group author. Before writing n.d., run this check:

1. Look near the title and at the end of the content. News articles and blog posts usually carry a date under the headline or byline. Longer reports put it on the cover page or the copyright page of the PDF.
2. Use a "last updated" date if it applies to the content you are citing. APA treats an updated date as the publication date, because updating means the content changed. A page that says "Updated March 2024" is a 2024 source.
3. Do not use a "last reviewed" date. APA's guidance is specific here: content that has been reviewed has not necessarily been changed, so a review date says nothing about when the content was written. A page whose only date is "Medically reviewed on June 3, 2025" is still an n.d. source. Health sites trip students constantly on this, and it was the exact situation a psychology graduate student described on Reddit: a webpage with a review date and an author, but no original publication date. The answer is n.d.
4. Do not use the copyright year in the website footer. The "© 2026" at the bottom of a site applies to the whole website and is typically auto-generated. It says nothing about when the page you are reading was published. A page last touched in 2010 can sit on a site whose footer says 2026.

Only when all four steps come up empty do you have a genuine no-date source.

When You Also Need a Retrieval Date

This is the question students ask most, usually phrased as "do I still have to list the date I accessed the website?" For most sources the answer is no. APA 7 requires a retrieval date only when the content is designed to change over time and the page is not archived (Section 9.16). The format is:

Retrieved Month Day, Year, from URL

Sources that need one: online dictionary entries, social media profiles, frequently revised organizational webpages, maps and dashboards that update continuously. Sources that do not: journal articles, books, news articles, reports, blog posts, YouTube videos, and any page with a stable publication date.

The two rules interact. A page with no date is more likely to be a page that changes silently, so n.d. references often carry a retrieval date. But the two are separate decisions: an undated page that will never change gets n.d. and no retrieval date, and a dated page that updates constantly gets its year and a retrieval date.

If you were taught to write "Retrieved from" before every URL, that was APA 6. The 7th edition dropped it. A bare URL now ends the reference, and the retrieval date appears only in the narrow case above.

Worked Examples

1. Webpage by an Organization, No Date

The most common case. The organization is the author, the page title takes sentence case, and n.d. sits where the year would be.

Reference:

The Cornell Lab. (n.d.). Citizen science. https://www.birds.cornell.edu/citizenscience/

In-text, parenthetical: (The Cornell Lab, n.d.)

In-text, narrative: The Cornell Lab (n.d.) describes...

When the group author and the site name are the same, the site name is dropped from the reference to avoid repeating it (Section 9.28). That is why no site name appears between the title and the URL here. The full element order for dated pages is in our APA 7 website citation guide.

2. Online Dictionary Entry (n.d. Plus Retrieval Date)

Online dictionary entries are continuously updated and unarchived, so they take both n.d. and a retrieval date. This mirrors APA's own model example:

Reference:

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Citation. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved August 8, 2026, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/citation

In-text: (Merriam-Webster, n.d.)

The retrieval date appears only in the reference. The in-text citation never carries it.

3. Social Media Profile

A profile page changes every time the account posts, so it takes n.d. and a retrieval date. The handle goes in square brackets after the author, and the description of the page goes in square brackets after the title.

Reference:

National Aeronautics and Space Administration [@nasa]. (n.d.). Posts [Instagram profile]. Instagram. Retrieved August 8, 2026, from https://www.instagram.com/nasa/

In-text: (National Aeronautics and Space Administration, n.d.)

Individual posts are different: a post has a publication date, so cite the post with its date and skip the retrieval date.

4. PDF or Report With No Date

Undated PDFs are everywhere: handbooks, fact sheets, white papers, internal guides. The pattern is the report format with n.d. in the date position. An illustrative example:

Reference:

Riverside Community Coalition. (n.d.). Volunteer orientation handbook. https://...

In-text: (Riverside Community Coalition, n.d.)

Check the PDF itself before settling on n.d. Reports often hide their date on the cover, in the footer of the first page, or in the document properties. Our APA 7 PDF citation guide covers how the format shifts when the PDF is a report, an article, or a book.

5. Webpage With No Author and No Date

When both elements are missing, apply both rules at once: the title moves into the author position, and n.d. follows it.

Reference:

Title of page. (n.d.). Site Name. URL

Illustrative example:

Understanding tide pools. (n.d.). Ocean Explorers. https://...

In-text, parenthetical: ("Understanding Tide Pools," n.d.)

In-text, narrative: "Understanding Tide Pools" (n.d.) explains...

The title takes quotation marks and title case in the in-text citation because the page sits inside a larger site. A standalone work (a book, a report) would be italicized instead. The reference is alphabetized by title, ignoring A, An, and The. Before using this pattern, confirm the page has no group author; most pages that look authorless are published by an identifiable organization, and the organization is the author.

6. Archival or Classical Work With an Approximate Date

For archival materials where the date can be estimated, APA uses "ca." (circa) before the year rather than n.d. A classical work republished in a modern edition carries both dates:

In-text: (Aristotle, ca. 350 B.C.E./2000)

The estimate goes in the reference the same way: (ca. 350 B.C.E.). Reserve ca. for cases where you have real evidence of the approximate date, such as an archive's own catalog record. For an ordinary webpage, no evidence means n.d., never a guess.

Special Cases

A Review Date but No Publication Date

Health and government pages often show "Last reviewed" with no publication date. As covered above, the review date does not count. Cite the page with n.d., and add a retrieval date if the content is the kind that changes. If the page shows both "Published" and "Last reviewed," use the published date and ignore the review line.

Two or More n.d. Works by the Same Author

When one author has several undated works in your reference list, distinguish them with letters attached to n.d. by a hyphen: n.d.-a, n.d.-b, n.d.-c. Assign the letters by the order of the entries in the reference list, which for identical authors and dates means alphabetical order by title.

References:

National Museum of Australia. (n.d.-a). Nelson the Newfoundland dog's collar. https://... National Museum of Australia. (n.d.-b). Newcastle bakery cart. https://...

In-text: (National Museum of Australia, n.d.-a) or, citing both, (National Museum of Australia, n.d.-a, n.d.-b)

Note the hyphen. With a real year the letter attaches directly (2020a), but n.d. takes a hyphen before the letter.

Where n.d. Entries Sort in the Reference List

For works by the same author, APA orders entries chronologically, and n.d. counts as earliest: n.d. entries come first, then dated entries from oldest to newest, then in-press entries last. So Smith (n.d.) files above Smith (2019). Across different authors, alphabetical order by surname applies as usual; n.d. changes nothing there.

Citing a Whole Website With No Date

If you mention a website in passing ("we recruited participants through Reddit"), APA does not want a reference entry at all. Name the site in the text and put the URL in parentheses after it. A reference entry, and therefore the n.d. question, only arises when you cite specific content from a specific page. The full decision tree for in-text forms is in our complete guide to in-text citations.

Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

• Using the footer copyright year as the publication date. The auto-updating "© 2026" describes the site, and the page you are citing may be years older. If the page itself shows no date, it is n.d.
• Using a "last reviewed" date. Reviewed content is unchanged content until the page says otherwise. Only "published" and "updated" dates qualify.
• Using the date you accessed the page as the publication date. The day you read a page has its own slot (the retrieval date) and belongs there only when the content is designed to change.
• Adding retrieval dates to everything. This is the APA 6 habit. In APA 7, a stable source with a URL ends with the URL.
• Formatting n.d. wrong. Lowercase, two periods, no internal space: n.d. In a reference, the period that closes the date element follows the parenthesis: (n.d.).
• Mismatched in-text and reference dates. If you later find the real date and update the reference, update every in-text citation with it. Instructors check this pairing, and citation software gets it right automatically because both forms draw on one record.

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