802693744 Drag and drop annotations

bolejj

hello-

Is there a way to turn off the links that are included whenever I drag an annotation (left panel) from zot to MS Word?

As you can see below there are two links in parentheses. (These are actual links, though pasting them turns them into text in this post). The links are occurring without using the shift key when pasting.

I have Better bibTex recently installed recently. Could that install have changed the default behavior of just pasting the annotation with the citation key with no links?


“Over the past decades, evidence for the physical health benefits of enhanced psychological well-being PWB has expanded dramatically” (Trudel-Fitzgerald et al., 2021, p. 137) (pdf)

bolejj

Since the first post I was able to stop the links and now the whole drag and drop annotation is plain text.
This was accomplished in zot via Preferences > Export > and then changing the "Not Format" to not include Zot Links.
However, my goal is to gen the Bibliography, and with that change the zot option in Word is not able to gen the bib, because it does not see any citations.

bolejj

I'm having a similar problem as described here https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/425457#Comment_425457

And as suggested in that thread I 'reloaded' the MS Word addon in Word's startup folder. But I'm still having the same error as reported in that thread.

[JavaScript Error: "You must insert a citation before performing this operation."]

I think this is probably a zot config issue. I've been trying to get this to work for 4 hours or so and and have made many changes along the way. Here are a few I can recall.

> Tools > better bibText > Export > quick-copy is now set to LaTeX citation and 'cite'

> Edit > Preferences > Export > Note Format "markdown + Rich text" with Markdown to "Include Zotero Links"

This error was in the debug window.
[JavaScript Warning: "XUL box for caption element contained an inline #text child, forcing all its children to be wrapped in a block." {file: "chrome://zotero/content/preferences/preferences.xul" line: 0}]

bolejj

This is over my head...

Here is what I found on-line regarding the error

"Even I got the same error, I cleared it, it was an css error I used wrong
format in css file which caused me the error, basically check the syntax of
html, css."

bolejj

just a note.

In the Word doc I can only get the hyperlink type fields which the bib generator does not recognize.
If I remove the hyperlink word fields from the drag/drop processes via these set of preferences, then no MS Word fields are created, and the bib generator again does not gen the bib.

Just FYI not sure if this helps or not.

> Edit > Preferences > Export > Note Format "markdown + Rich text" with Markdown to "Include Zotero Links"

dstillman

This sounds like a misunderstanding. You can control whether those two links are included with the "Include Zotero Links" Quick Copy option for Rich Text, but this has nothing to do with generating a bibliography, since drag-and-drop and copy-and-paste can't create active Zotero citations (i.e., Word fields). If you want that, you need to use the word processor plugin, and specifically the Add Note button to insert notes with active citations that will be used by the plugin to generate a bibliography.

https://www.zotero.org/blog/zotero-6/#adding_notes_to_word_processors

bolejj

Yes. If that is the way it works, then it is a misunderstanding.
I don't know though. I must not be missing something.
I imagined that I could just drag an annotation to Word. When dropped into Word it would create a field where it puts the reference (Akin et al., 2013, p. 178) when you drop the annotation from zot.

Then you could just use the "Add/Edit Bibliography" Button in Word to create the bib.
You wouldn't need to use the "add/edit citation" at all.

What am I not understanding?

dstillman

It’s exactly what I said: that’s not possible.

bolejj

OK. So then I have to create annotations, turn those into notes, then use the Word plugin to search for the note, then insert it.

That's too many steps.

I must be missing something.

adamsmith

You're not missing anything. The feature just doesn't appear to work the way you want it to. That's fine -- not everyone likes every feature.

There are various ways of getting to a somewhat similar experience of what you have in mind: You can write more of your text in notes (like -- draft multiple paragraphs in notes) and insert those as a whole in Word. I think the Obsidian add-on does something closer to what you have in mind if you want to write in Obsidian.
But if those don't work for you, it really is perfectly OK to just copy excerpts from notes and manually insert citations.

bolejj

Yes, thx. I just needed to know that I was on the right track... even if it may not be the track I want.
I do use Obsidian.

At the end of this thread, discussing academic workflows, a poster suggest "Why use Zotero at all" due to all of the piece-meal contortions you have to go through to gen a bib., especially when not using MS Word, and apparently a lot of folks hate Word.

https://forum.obsidian.md/t/zotero-zotfile-mdnotes-obsidian-dataview-workflow/15536/103

I read that several days ago and discounted it as 'heretical', but now I'm wondering.

A PhD type person has several workflows defined on this web page.
https://chris-grieser.de/Comprehensive-Academic-Workflow-from-Reading-to-Writing-in-Markdown

I have to say that I'm surprised that there isn't a standard academic workflow as of yet.

Yea, I get it. A lot of folks hate MS Word.

Dragging and dropping annotations from zot to Word and building the bib directly from that will remain a dream I guess. Yet would be a very simple solution.

Thx for your comments.