formatting issues when dragging/dropping from Zotero to Word

Angharad09

I've read threads on similar issues but my situation doesn't match the advice I've found, so here goes:
When I drag and drop an item from Zotero to Word (for Mac), to create a bibliography entry, I get two undesired format features:
(1) font/font size (Times New Roman 12)
(2) left indent (minus .5 inch).
Neither of these matches my "Bibliography" style in Word. In fact, I do not have ANY Word style that uses Times New Roman. (I went through the Format Style menu and checked every "available style" so I am quite sure of this.)
This happens for multiple citation styles, not just my preferred one.
Weirdly, about once out of every 10 tries, it gets the font right (but never the indent). Later if I try the same citation style again, it gets the font wrong.
Zotero and Word are both up to date.
I have restarted both programs.
I understand from other threads that Zotero cannot influence the font choice, but I don't see any way this could be coming from Word... or anything else I can do to fix it.
Clues welcome!

dstillman

The "Bibliography" style is only relevant when you're using the Word plugin, which is how you generally want to be using Zotero with Word.

Complex formatting (indents, etc.) often won't work properly via Quick Copy. Zotero doesn't know where you're dragging to, and different programs interpret the same rich-text markup differently.

The Times New Roman is definitely coming from somewhere in your Word config. Quick Copy doesn't apply any fonts.

Angharad09

To confirm, yes, I am using the Word plugin.

The problem is not that it is *failing to apply* formatting.
Rather, it is *introducing new* formatting.
The new formatting that it introduces does not exist either (1) in the individual Word document or (2) in any style in the Normal template.

It is something about the interaction between Zotero and Word that is causing this. I'm interested in finding out what that is and fixing it if possible.

Additional information in case it is helpful: This has been going on for as long as I have used Zotero -- probably ~10 years -- across multiple versions of Word and Zotero and multiple Macbooks. During that time I have not used Times New Roman, or a negative left indent, in any active styles.

adamsmith

Wait, are you using the Word add -on or drag & drop(=quick copy)? Those are 2 completely different operations

Angharad09

I have Zotero.dotm loaded in Word (it shows in "Global Templates and Add-Ins").
And when I want to add an entry to a Word document, I drag it from the Zotero window to the Word document.
I set this up so long ago I can't remember the details. I thought I had to have the add-in to make Quick Copy work (obviously that was mistaken, as you pointed out -- if I un-select Zotero.dotm the Quick Copy works exactly the same).
Does that give you any clue as to how I can make the bad formatting stop?

adamsmith

OK, so that's Quick Copy entirely -- you'd very likely not see the same issue with the Word add-on (which might be worthwhile looking into).

Have you tried right-click --> Paste Options --> Merge formatting instead of drag& drop? If that works to insert in the way you want, I'd suggest just making that the default in Word (which it is, or at least should be, in the most recent versions anyway). You can google how for your specific Word version.

Angharad09

That definitely does the trick! Thank you!

One more question, purely for curiosity -- the solution above is just as convenient as Quick Copy (or will be once I get used to the keyboard commands), and I don't NEED to take this further, so really just if something jumps out...

I noticed that there is a folder of "Word Script Menu Items" for Zotero, and that all the scripts in that folder refer back to Word 2008. Is that normal? For example,

do shell script "PIPE=\"/Users/Shared/.zoteroIntegrationPipe_$LOGNAME\"; if [ ! -e \"$PIPE\" ]; then PIPE=~/.zoteroIntegrationPipe; fi; if [ -e \"$PIPE\" ]; then echo 'MacWord2008 addBibliography '" & quoted form of POSIX path of (path to current application) & " > \"$PIPE\"; else exit 1; fi;"

I haven't used Word 2008 in years and it's never been on this computer. I don't know if its use in this script is standard or whether it is meant to update when Word upgrades.

Again, just a curiosity question at this point and thanks for the help so far, which has definitely given me a usable solution.

adomasven

Where do you see this folder? This would be a remnant from earlier Zotero versions that supported Word 2008 on Mac. We generally try to remove any earlier versions of plugins that are no longer supported, but depending on how it was installed we may have failed to do that. Either way you can safely remove that.

dstillman

@Angharad09: I'm not sure what you mean by "the solution above". Just to be super clear, if you've been dragging to Word, you've been using Quick Copy, not the Word plugin. adamsmith was giving you a suggestion to fix how Quick Copy works in your Word installation, but that's still not how we recommend using Zotero with Word.