„Show Editor“ missing/ „Editor anzeigen“ fehlt Zotero 8

dennispauly

Hey there, I just updated to Zotero 8. I use Zotero for over a decade now and always recommened ist. But since Zotero 8 the option to manually edit a citation within the word plugin is gone. From time to time it is necessary to manually customize single citations, e.g. brackets which should not close or a final dot which should not appear. I always solved that by manually editing, which was perfect. Is there any way to get this function back? Manually editing in Word without updating it in Zotero is not a satisfying option. Thank you in advance!

adamsmith

That's just a misunderstanding. Editing in Word does exactly the same as the editor in the old dialogue and has for at least a decade: Edits are kept and future updating of that citation is disabled.

dennispauly

Thank you very much for your quick response, I actually wasn’t aware of that, I used this function frequently. It probably never caused an obvious problem because I hardly change the underlying entry in the Zotero database.

konevimd

I've researched this extensively but haven't found a solution. The removal of the "Show Editor" feature is a serious flaw in the Zotero 9 update, unfortunately. For those using end-of-text footnotes, the Preview feature before pressing Enter was quite practical. As mentioned here, if you manually modify footnotes in Word, changing the order of footnotes and adding duplicate footnotes to a changed source reduces Zotero's functionality. I would have preferred to use an earlier version that included this feature, which allowed for editing prefix and suffix notes along with page numbers when citing multiple sources, and removing incorrect semicolons and parentheses.

dstillman

@konevimd: There's a citation preview in the Zotero 10 beta. For everything else, you should either customize the citation properly (which is how you set prefixes and suffixes) or, if you absolutely can't, edit within the document, which has been identical to using the classic-dialog editor for the last 15 years.

https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/classic_citation_dialog#what_happened_to_the_citation_editor

konevimd

Thank you very much for your prompt response. Ideally, as you pointed out, all details should be entered correctly when adding the first footnote.

However, there's a problem with both my previous version and Zotero 9: For example, when citing multiple sources, we enter page numbers and add prefaces and afternotes. When we cite in this way, Zotero interprets the notes between the sources as page numbers, and instead of putting a period at the end of the note, it mistakenly uses a semicolon.

Since there's no preview feature right now, there's no way to correct these period and semicolon errors. Even if I try to fix it in Word, the problem will persist.

I think these problems are particularly common in some social science fields with footnotes that frequently require prefaces and afternotes.

I'm avoiding continuing with the beta version because it might be too time-consuming. I would like to see the "Show Editor" and "Preview" features return, or a new enhancement added to fix the period and semicolon errors I mentioned.

adamsmith

I don't understand why you think fixing things in Word wouldn't work? As dstillman and I have said here, there has not been a functional difference between making changes in Word and the classic dialog's editor since 2011.

Beyond that, I'm a social scientist and do occasionally write with footnotes and there just isn't an issue here. You can add notes between citations in the prefix and suffix fields in the dialog and they're obviously not treated as page numbers (which you can enter separately) and if you end a suffix with a period, Zotero omits the semicolon between that item and the next.

As noted, the preview is in the current beta version (see below)

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u2433/3iqjw0pg0u4m6i6nydnt.png

konevimd

Thank you again for your feedback. I understand your point, but I think I didn't fully explain my intention.
Let me share an example of a citation I generated with Zotero version 9:

Person 1, Source 1, 2001, 5; See also this source Person 2, Source 2, 2011, 10; For a general literature review see Person 3, Source 3, 2021, 15 Scientific research on this topic is ongoing intensively.


According to the rules of the institution we use, source citations and notes must be separated by a period, not a semicolon.

(Manually corrected citation format)

Person 1, Source 1, 2001, 5. See also this source Person 2, Source 2, 2011, 10. For a general literature review see Person 3, Source 3, 2021, 15. Scientific research on this topic is ongoing intensively.

adamsmith

That works the same way:

". See also this source" in the prefix for Source 2 and ". For a general literature review see " in the prefix field for Source 3 will produces exactly this.

You should very rarely need to manually edit citations.