What version of Word do you mean?

And what are you talking about?  By reference do you mean the citation,
i.e., a statement of where the information you use originally came from?  If
so, someone may have misled you, all recent versions of Word (at least since
Word 6/95) do footnotes and endnotes (under Insert | Reference) and I don't
think there's much beyond that to make citations easier in any version.

So perhaps explain more specifically what you were told, or what you are
hoping for?

Here's a tip, though--for your university essay, avoid random commas such as
the one in your subject line; and avoid misuse of words--one does not
reference an essay, but rather, in writing an essay, references other books,
if using reference as a verb.