Zotero, SharePoint and tracked changes

charlie.readman

I'm working on a Word document with multiple other people working and editing via SharePoint (often simultaneously) with autosave and track changes on. I have Zotero but my colleague does not. We will also be sending the document to an external collaborator for comments/revisions. Will Zotero be able to cope with this? I'm using the most current versions of both Zotero and Word. How do we avoid breaking the document?

I know this sort of question has been asked before, but everything seems to be >10 years old so asking for fresh data!

adomasven

Collaborative writing should generally work fine, but it is largely up to Microsoft tools to not break Zotero citations in documents, and Word Online support for fields is less robust than the Desktop application. Any citations that may end up in tracked changes (e.g. due to copying and pasting) are likely to cause issues and those changes should be accepted or rejected before working with Zotero.

charlie.readman

Sounds good, thanks! I'll make sure the others are using the desktop app and not online. Are you referring to citations already pasted into the document by others? There's currently no reference fields in there, just footnotes with hyperlinks. We have a load of changes tracked and it'll be up to our collaborator to accept/reject these after we send the document, and we've been asked to sort the references out before sending it back to them. I don't anticipate they'll be using Zotero, just accepting/rejecting comments and maybe making edits/comments to the text with tracked changes. I'm the only one using Zotero at the moment. Will the doc be ok so long as they don't try to edit the references?

adomasven

Are you referring to citations already pasted into the document by others?

If somebody cuts and pastes some part of the text which contains Zotero citations, either in the text or footnotes, that text will appear under tracked changes (both the cut part, and the pasted part). Those citations are likely to cause issues when attempting to continue working with Zotero -- attempting to cite, edit citations or refresh the document. Before attempting any of those actions you should accept or reject those edits that contain citations.

charlie.readman

Nobody has added any citations yet, thankfully - that's my job and my job only. We'll be sending the collaborators a document with tracked changes - including all comments/changes they've made previously, our new changes and responses to comments, and the citations I will be adding today. The collaborators won't be using Zotero or modifying citations at all. My main question is: will the document be safe if they make their own text edits to the new document (now with citations) and add/resolve comments, while leaving the citations untouched (and not adding any of their own)?

adomasven

Yes, them editing text with citations, and even copying and pasting them (to rearrange the text) will be fine, as long as those changes are accepted or rejected before using the Zotero plugin with the document again.

charlie.readman

Wonderful, thank you! I'll naturally keep backups just in case, but at least now I have a bit more confidence on what will and won't break the document.