Poor support for frequent keyboard shortcuts

nise81
I switched from Mendely to Zotero very late, but I am surprised that frequently needed keyboard shortcuts are not supported by default:

1) Copy an APA-like formatted citation by selecting one or many collection entries and pressing Ctrl+C. (Whether it is APA or any other citation style could be chosen in the settings)

2) Copy the BibTeX keys of one or many selected collection entries by pressing Ctrl+K

There might be workaround to achieve similar results, but my question addresses the poor usability. I need this shortcuts to save time without doing any additional click.

Any suggestions are welcome. Since I really need this shortcuts I would also add this to the code and file a pull request on GitHub.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    If you're not sure how to do something, you can really just ask, instead of jumping to accusations of "poor usability". Zotero has been able to copy citations, references, and export formats to the clipboard for 20 years, since before Mendeley existed.

    https://www.zotero.org/support/creating_bibliographies#quick_copy

    Zotero isn't a BibTeX manager, so while it can export BibTeX entries (not keys) via Quick Copy like any other format, if you're using a BibTeX-based workflow, you'll want to use the Better BibTeX plugin.
  • nise81
    Thank you for providing the link to the so called quick copy. As I said, there seems to be no way to use Ctrl+C (or command+c on Mac) to get a formatted citation. In the edit menu the "copy" entry is even greyed out. Please correct me if I don't see the solution.

    The same accounts for BibTeX-Integrations like Better BibTeX. With Ctrl+Shif+K the entire BibTeX entry can be copied but not the key like 'Smith2026' or LaTeX-like "\cite{Smith2026}"
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    I mean, you can't just make up keyboard shortcuts. I linked to instructions that explain exactly what keys to use. Quick Copy uses Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-C for bibliography entries and Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-A for citations. You should see Copy Citation and Copy Bibliography menu options in the Edit menu when a regular item is selected.

    You'd have to ask the BBT developer about copying citation keys. I believe it was possible with a button click next to the citation key in previous versions. Now that Zotero has a native Citation Key field, that might be temporarily unavailable.
  • emilianoeheyns
    translator-based quick copy has only one option where csl-style-based ones have two (citation and bibliography entry). No way around that.

    The Tags & Actions can create shortcut keys that copy the citekey field of the selected items onto the clipboard. That doesn't even need BBT anymore.
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