basic citation questions using plugin for ms word 2008 for mac

cjkudlick

Hi All,
This question is so basic that I'm horrified to be asking it, even as a relative newcomer: once you're in an endnote, how do you get back to your Word document without scrolling all the way back to where it was? I read somewhere that you can use shift-F5, but this doesn't seem to work for me.

Also, does anyone know how to purge a computer of Endnote using mac osx snow-leopard? I tried the typical thing of dumping it in the trash, but it still shows up in my Word menus. Unless having Endnote lurking somewhere interferes with Zotero I can just let it be.

thanks!

adamsmith

That should work by just double-clicking on the number of the endnote.

For the second issue, you probably need to somehow delete Endnote from the Word macro list, but that's just an educated guess.

cjkudlick

Thanks - I figured it had to be obvious! What about editing notes from the inside? I'm having a problem with accent marks being transformed into odd characters or sometimes I want to add text to explain a reference. But when I go down to the endnote, it simply highlights the text - I can only add something at the end, but can't change anything within the citation or add a comment such as: "For an excellent example of this, see x's discussion in ..." I can't even delete the period to insert my comment at the end, as in "[Full reference] offers an excellent example in her discussion of x.

adamsmith

use prefix and suffix in the word plugin for that.
Deleting the period is trickier - you can use the "show editor" button and edit in the editor, but take the warning about no updating seriously - that citation will not reflect any changes in citation style or your database (though endnote numbers will keep updating of course).

cjkudlick

Thanks! I accidentally just discovered that you can edit within a zotero note if you type control+option+e - this gets you to the show editor window.

One more issue: suppose I just want to add a note not attached to anything in the zotero bibliography? For example, after a long discourse on chocolate chip cookies I simply want to say in a note: "there are variations with nuts too." I tried using the Word footnote command (control+option+f) but a little white box appears where the superscript number would normally be.

adamsmith

The Word footnote option is exactly what you want - I can't tell why it's not working correctly - it's unlikely to be a Zotero issue.

Simon

On Mac, the keyboard shortcut to add a new footnote is Cmd+Opt+F.

cjkudlick

It appears to be something to do with the keyboard shortcut - when I tired it through the Word menu (insert-footnote, etc.) it worked fine. Interestingly, option+command+f created a footnote at the bottom of the page, while control+option+f leads to the little box. I still wonder if Endnote is messing things up because when I right click in the body of a note created in Zotero, if I scroll down to "Edit Citation" an Endnote message box comes up saying that I need to turn the citation feature on. As long as I can do my notes without triggering something awful, I can live with this! Thanks for all your help.

adamsmith

it's probably still a good idea to find out how to get rid of Endnote - don't they have pretty active support forums/fora? That would seem like a more promising place to find an answer.

cjkudlick

Ended up calling customer support at EN, and they walked me through uninstalling all the possible back-ups, hidden files, etc, so I think I'm good to go. Thanks again for your prompt help. :)

cjkudlick

One more question, just to clarify: when the editor window message says "citation will not update to reflect any changes in citation style or your database" I think this means if I make a change to a citation in this window, it won't transfer to my main zotero data base, which means if I thought I was fixing a typo for a cite in the editor window, it's just for that one instance, and future entries will contain the original error unless I go into the data base itself to fix them, right? But is there anything else I need to worry about by making changes in the editor window?

adamsmith

no, that's not what it means. It's the other way around: If you make a change in your database it won't update the information for that citation. Perhaps more importantly, if you switch (or update) the citation style, that citation won't be converted to the new style. Depending on your needs that can be a bit of a problem, we strongly recommend only using the editor if you really can't get what you want any other way. In most cases prefix/suffix works perfectly well.