Single to multiple citations in Word Plugin

Is there a way to convert individual references into multiple references without re-entering all of them?

For example, let's say you have a citation in your document:
...blah blah blah [1].

But then you find a couple more references that are also relevant and want to add them so it would now be multiple citatoins:
...blah blah blah [1, 2, 3]

but instead you get:
...blah blah blah [1][2][3] (with three separate citations)

Is there a way to simply highlight those 3 and merge them into one "multiple" citation?

Thanks!
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  • The Word and Open Office plugins do not have the ability to merge individual citations into a multiple reference citation.
  • Are there any plans to advance in this direction and add the feature to the plugins? Journal usually have published rules on how to organise multiple references (ordering, separator, same author-issue) and I remember ProCite to allow specifying these rules and it rearanged citations if fields appeared in sequence in the Word document.

    I consider this a major feature in practical writing.
  • I, too, would like it to be easy to add additional citations to preexisting citations. Perhaps this has been discussed more recently in another thread?
  • Why not have something like EndNote that "merges" the references automatically when a second (and third, and so ...) are put together?

    Be able to move from xingle to multiple citations and back if necessary is really a must have.
  • You can merge citations manually...

    (1) press shift + F9 to reveal the field codes.

    (2) copy the {"itemID":"111"} bit from one reference to another, making sure to add a comma between

    (3) add ,"position":1 after each item, so each curly bracket you have {"itemID":"111","position":1}

    The resulting field code should look like this: { ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM {"citationItems":[{"itemID":"111","position":1},{"itemID":"112","position":1},{"itemID":113,"position":1}]}}

    Afterwards you can use the Zotero interface to edit your citations, as normal...
  • Would it be possible to write a word macro to do that?
  • How do you get at these codes in Open Office? Thx, Mark
  • I think ctrl + F9 works, but I haven't used OOo for a while...
  • Well, I couldn't get the fields to show up in open office for the life of me, so I just spent the last half hour hacking at the xml that you can find if you unzip a open office document, but that's totally unnecessary!

    The WAY to do this is to site one of the references, and then to edit that reference. In the edit reference box, you can add as many references as you want!

    It seems this problem is fixed, and there is a GUI to do it! So much easier than hacking XML.
  • I forgot to mention, press the "multiple citations" button. Sigh.
  • I am using the multiple citations button, but my citations do not re-order themselves to the sequential order. (ie i get 2-4,1 or 9,7,8.

    Using Word for Mac 2008.
  • edited June 16, 2009
    Same story, and even worse, the multiple sources seem to be ordered backwards numerically regardless of their order in the GUI! That is, the in-text ref will be (22; 21) regardless of which reference comes first in the GUI selector...

    Bummer.

    This issue is the focus of the following topic:

    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/3579/multiple-citation-numbering-unpredictable-wrong
  • This very basic function appears to still be missing, after about two years :-(
    Am I doing something wrong here?
  • I'm also interested in this. Any updates?
  • If it's indeed related to the CSL processor, it should be resolved when Zotero integrates that code in the next month or two.
  • I'm looking forward to this change, too.
  • This feature would be great. Also, the "multiple citations" button is cumbersome- why not just be able to use Ctrl or shift to highlight the citations you want?
  • "This feature" isn't really a helpful description at this point in the thread:
    1. The original request is essentially possible using edit citation and the mulitple sources button.
    2. merging citations isn't possible and probably not high on the agenda, either - I see this as a pretty rare scenario with minimal time saving.
    3. Specifying rules and ordering as requested by MSchneider above is also possible.
    4. There is a somewhat bizarre ordering bug as described by eschrank and davclark above - the link provided by davclark leads to a in depth discussion. This has been partially solved, but not fully and will be fully resolved with the upcoming implementation of CSL 1.0.
    5. A better interface for the multiple source window - including group selection and the possibility to move individual items up and down - has been discussed a number of times and is planned.
  • " 2. merging citations isn't possible and probably not high on the agenda, either - I see this as a pretty rare scenario with minimal time saving."

    I have to merge citations constantly while writing, and manually editing each citation rather than having the program recognize that you're trying to merge citations is a pain. This is why, at the end of the day, I always resort to exporting my library to endnote.
  • I think the solution/workaround for Word posted above still works - doesn't work for Open Office, unfortunately, because it's a mess to edit reference marks.
    Considering that the structure of the fields is pretty simple it shouldn't be that hard to write something - should be possible to write a non-Zotero macro for Word that does this for you -
    as an educated guess I don't think this is going to be added within Zotero any time soon - since it's possible in general (i.e. via edit citation) I don't think it has the type of urgency that would bump it up the priority list.
  • edited April 18, 2010
    I don't mean to press the issue, but I really want to reiterate ewandro's point that the ability to "move from single to multiple citations and back if necessary is really a must have."

    EDITED. I see that "edit citation" + multiple sources works fine, still, it's not as simple as it could be.
  • edited April 18, 2010
    The proposed workaround (mis-ordering aside) is not that great. For example, if you simply want to add a 10th reference to a list of 9, you have to open up the multiple sources pane and manually add all 10 references that time and every time you may wish to edit that list
    I don't understand - why wouldn't you just do "edit citation" - which automatically opens the multiple source window with the 9 citations already selected - and add the 10th reference?
    If the reason is that it might not be in the right place than a) how is merging going to solve that and b) I agree that should be addressed - as soon as possible - but that's a different issue that I've mentioned under 5.) above.

    Edit: didn't see your edit - but that's my point - if it's really just about the tiny bit of work saved in the rather rare cases where you actually merge rather than add I don't think this is a pressing need. If this is about a better multiple source interface I'm with you but that's a different issue.
  • edited May 31, 2010
    It would have been much easier if multiple citations were automatically merged by Zotero.
    EndNote does this, why Zotero can't ???
  • I just don't understand why that's so important, except for "that's how I used to do it in Endnote".
    Where is the usage case where automatic merging is better than a good multiple source dialogue?
    And I can think of a bunch of possible downsides (how to deal with prefix/suffix, how to address unwanted merging etc.)
  • GAH. I have over a hundred references in my bibliography, probably a few hundred individual citations to contend with in the paper I'm working on. Just found out the journal wants them merged. Multiple references editor doesn't seem very helpful after the fact, especially since there doesn't seem to be a way to paste a list of zotero's own tags into the citation. Am I missing something? I'm going to have to go and re-enter these things one at a time off a list? Please someone tell me I'm missing something...
  • I don't understand a word.
    Remember, we don't know how your document looks.
    How do your citations currently look? How does the journal want them?

    "past a list of zotero's own tags into the citation" - I have no idea how that's related to multiple citaitons.

    In short, take a step back and explain from the beginning what you have done and what you're trying to do.
  • The text is a review, and currently looks like this:

    Statement about research (Soandso et al., 2000) (Person et al., 2004) (etc) (etc) (etc).

    I need it to look like this:

    Statement about research (Soandso et al., 2000; Person et al., 2004; etc; etc; etc).

    I understand there is a multiple references editor and if I had only a few to deal with, re-entering all of the references wouldn't be a problem. Many of the references come from the same group and year so I have to look at the meta data for each reference to make sure it's the correct one.

    Is there a way to: 1) Toggle between these formats without re-entering every reference using the multiple reference editor; or 2) Paste a list of the references I want to cite into the multiple references editor without choosing each one out of the library individually? As it is, it seems like I have to completely re-reference the paper, but I feel like I must be missing something.
  • no, you're not missing anything.
    You didn't use Zotero the way it was designed - which would be using the multiple reference editor from the start - so now you're pretty much stuck with redoing this - sorry!

    The answer to both of your specific questions is no.
    To explain:
    1) would have been possible had you used the multiple citation interface and a style that put each reference in parentheses - which seems quite odd and I'm not aware of any style that requires that (and thus also of none in the repository), but in general it's possible (it's easy, e.g. to switch between IEEE which does [1][2] to Vancouver, which does (1,2)(

    2) As I say above the multiple citation interface isn't ideal - I think it's improving in the next version actually - but "pasting" things is never going to work - I don't even know who it's supposed to.

    More constructively, what I would do is to remove field-codes with the Zotero plugin and then do a search and replace for
    ') (' --> '; '
    that should do the trick for almost everything. Your document won't be linked to Zotero anymore, but I take it it's mostly done anyway.
  • That would be because I originally needed to be able to move them around separately as I rearranged text, switched back and forth with pubmed and tracked down papers. It honestly didn't occur to me that zotero didn't have some means of changing formats given the variety of format requirements of professional journals.

    In any case, part of the attraction (at least which drew me to make the switch) of zotero over endnote was the ability to be able to make annotations while researching on the web on the fly. If I'm going to have to contend with non-intuitive clunky interfaces, I'll switch back to endnote and at least be more compatible with my peers. And, apparently, more flexible.

    Also, sheesh. Thanks for the helpful advice.
  • All right, I only saw the first part of your comment (the "you're doing it wrong") part when I dashed off my reply...I'm very sorry for being snippy, but this hit me at a really bad (that is, last minute) time. Not to say that's an excuse, but...

    Anyways, I'm using Cell journal formatting, submitting to JCB. I just switched to Zotero this year when I wrote my thesis and I'm still adding to my library as I go. So far it's been a great experience overall, but I'm surprised that this isn't even on the radar as something critical.
This discussion has been closed.