Can I just drag and drop a citation from My Library into a Word text?

juhan666

When I drag and drop an item from My Library into a Word document text, it shows up as a simple text, formatted as a Bibliography item (or just showing authors and title, if I keep Shift pressed). But it would be much more useful if it formatted itself as a *real citation*, and adding it to the Bibliography list also (so that I would not need to start the Add Citation dialogue from Word, and search the reference from there). Is there any possibility to set Zotero to do so? It seems to be a most obvious thing, but I cannot find the possibility anywhere, also in forums.

scottseagroves

This is exactly what Zotero's word processor integration is for: https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_usage

adamsmith

But no, you can't do it without the word processor integration -- the features (Word Fields here) that allow Zotero to live update citations aren't available to the clipboard from Zotero.

juhan666

Unfortunately, this does not work! I went again through the instructions suggested (thanks!) but not able to find it. I have Zotero integrated to my Word, works alright otherwise, but when I drag and drop an item from the Library into my Word text, it only shows up as a plain text, without field codes, and without adding nothing to the Bibliography. No matter if I keep the "Shift" pressed or no, the result is a sole plain text. This creates confusion and is of no use, as far as I understand. No use of a citation without a reference in the Bibliography .... does it work better in anyone's PC? may it be my computer's fault? ... thanks for trying to help anyway!

dstillman

You seem to have misunderstood the responses. Dragging and dropping won't and can't create active Zotero citations. As two people told you above, you have to use the word processor plugins.

juhan666

Thanks a lot, message clear! I indeed have misunderstood. The solution I searched for seems reasonable in principle, but of course there could be technical constraints, i am totally ignorant on this side.