How to share Zotero

WimiBerlin

Dear all

This is just a howto question. I have a problem with my Zotero (2.0.9) and sharing MS word documents, which I have prepared with it.

When I share a document with someone else, this results in two problems:
i) If the other person does not use Zotero, he cannot access the Zotero fields. This is okay. But even when I export my Zotero library, share it with him or her and he or she imports it, MS word still cannot access the Zotero fields. So, this is my first question. How can I share my Zotero-prepared documents in order to let others change them using Zotero?
ii) My second and even more important concern is with the conservation of Zotero fields. Whenever someone has edited a MS word file from me and sends it back to me, my own Zotero does not recognize the Zotero fields anymore. So for each iteration, I have to re-insert all fields. This cannot be as it is meant to be and I am sure that it's just me who uses the programm insufficiently.

Please let me know how to use Zotero's potential for collaboration best.

Thanks!

ajlyon

Don't use export and import for this. If you will be collaborating on a document, you should create a private group for your authors and copy the items to that group. Cite from the group library and the citations should be maintained fine.

WimiBerlin

Hi,

does this group feature require me to save my zotero library on a server (so not on my computer)?

Best regards

adamsmith

yes it does. No way around that at this time. There are plans to embed more info in the fields generated by Zotero, but that's still a long way to go.

I'm not sure about your second problem - technically it should be possible for field codes to remain in the document even as other people, without Zotero, work with it - I'm not sure how this works at the moment, though.

WimiBerlin

Thanks again. I will try the solution you suggested (groups). However, the second problem remains and is for me a rather serious one.

Best regards

Simon

Word field codes won't be lost as long as your collaborators are using Word. If your collaborators are using OpenOffice.org or another word processor, you could try switching from Fields to Bookmarks in Document Preferences before distributing your document (provided you aren't using a footnote citation style). This is very likely to preserve the fields if the document is saved from OpenOffice.org, but may or may not work with other word processors. When you get the document back, you may want to switch back to Fields, as they tend to work better overall.