Re-ordering citations in Zotero -no up and down arrows

Does anyone know how to re-order citations in Zotero? every time I need to delete all citations and manually add them again when I notice that I missed to include a reference or just add new text in the middle of my thesis and I need to add that new reference between 2 existing ones...this is really time-consuming..:S

I found one forum entry where this was asked saying there should be an up and down arrow on the right to re-order citations, but I can´t see any...I can´t see them either even if I change view between standard and stacked view..

Any help is much appreciated!
  • edited March 25, 2023
    Not sure what you're referring to here. References in a bibliography are ordered as required by the citation style you're using — generally alphabetically or based on order in the document (if you're using the word processor plugin).

    Can you take a screenshot that shows what you're looking at, upload it somewhere (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.), and provide a link here?
  • Thank for the fast reply. You can find a screenshot here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_Atk-2NvZ2PACuAnkCHQMSyQs2pvEp0n

    I am not sure what you mean..Let´s say I have a study from Riaz et al and Savarese et al. I had Riaz as 1.citation and Savarese as 2. Now I relaized I want to have Savarese as first citation and Riaz as second and I want to re-order accordingly..
    In a forum i saw that somebody had up and down arrows on the right so that you can just click on it and move the reference wherever you want to. That is what I need otherwise I always need to start over...

    I hope this is clear now..Thanks for the help!

  • edited March 26, 2023
    But those aren't citations — it's just your Zotero items list. It sorts using whatever column you've clicked on, currently Date Added, but the sort there has nothing to do with bibliographies.
  • edited March 26, 2023
    If what you mean is that you're generating a bibliography via right-click → "Create Bibliography from Items…" and using a numeric citation style such as IEEE, that's not going to produce a meaningful order, since there's no manual ordering in Zotero itself. To use a numeric style beyond a small number of citations that you could reorder manually, you would need to use the word processor plugins and insert citations into your document as you write, and then you'll get a bibliography that reflects the order of citations in the document.
  • I create the bibliography based on this list...see the same link for another screenshot to show how i create bibliography based on this list...or is there another way? and then i can re-order the items properly?
  • I see you add anoher comment already..ok thank you, I guess that is the only way to re-order then and I cannot manually move the items in my list and then re-generate a bibliography:S?
  • You haven't said what citation style you're using, but again, if it's a numeric style you want to be using the word processor plugin. "Create Bibliography from Collection/Items" is appropriate for styles that sort based on the author or date, or for numeric bibliographies that are small enough that you can reorder them by hand after generating them. Items in your Zotero library don't have an order.
  • I am using Vancouver style..I am not sure I undestand why you are saying items in the Zotero library don´t have an order..after creating the bibliography they are listed based on the order I have them in my Zotero list...
  • edited March 26, 2023
    Again, you're just sorting by the Date Added column. You can click any other column and the items list will sort by that. The sort order of the items list has nothing to do with the sort order of a bibliography.

    Since items in Zotero don't have an inherent order, when you generate a one-off bibliography in a numeric style, it will just sort by an internal order in the database. That might happen to match the Date Added column, but it's not guaranteed and isn't something you should rely on. (Among other things, it would be different on any synced computer.)

    I've explained how to use Zotero with numeric styles above, and that's really all I can say on this.
  • all clear, thanks for the clarifications!
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