Cant cite in Word/ Mac

KKeam

Hi
Forgive me being a novice here but I have been collecting information in Zotero. Now when I want to write my Word document I can't cite. I have downloaded the plug in and nothing comes up on the Word document that I can click to insert citation.
When I go into Tools - Add-ons - Zotero Word for Mac Intergration is there. When I click on it to reinstall it seems to but when I open Word nothing is new.
I have spent hours on this already and am so frustrated and would really value some help please.
Regards,
KK

adamsmith

Nothing in the Apple Script Menu, either?
https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/no_toolbar_in_word_2008_plugin
If not, follow these:
https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_troubleshooting#toolbar_does_not_appear_in_word_20042011_or_is_incompatible

KKeam

HI Adam,

Yes. I have realised that there won't be an icon like I saw on many tutorials, rather a drop down menu.
However now that I have add citation, add bibliography, it is not working well. If I add a citation, despite choosing Harvard formatting, it is not doing it in the right style. And it has added the bibliography when I asked it to but I lose items off the last page constantly. I am thinking I will add them all in at the end somehow but it is not as seamless as I think the process should be.
Any ideas please?

adamsmith

Sorry, I don't follow either of those problems. Could you provide examples?

KKeam

With the citation, it wants to add commas and too much information. Harvard referencing style is (Maslow 1934).
With the bibliography, I go to that page and if I have allowed the system to do its full citation (more information than I am allowed to present) then the reference in properly in the list. If I go back in and tidy up the citations the reference on my bib page disappears. Nightmare!

adamsmith

Well, first of all, there is no rule about whether Harvard has a comma between author and year or not. Harvard is just a name for citation styles that show author and date in parentheses in the text, it comes in hundreds of different forms, so if you don't like what you're getting, try some of the other available options
https://www.zotero.org/styles?q=Harvard
is just a subset

If there is more than author and year, you've likely entered something wrong in Zotero, e.g. an author as "Firstname Lastname" rather than "Lastname, Firstname".

You should try to avoid manually editing citations as much as possible. I'm a little puzzled why it would disappear from the bibliography, but you are likely to break its ability to update from Zotero and to change to a different citation style, so that's almost always a bad idea.

KKeam

Thank you, I will check out those other options.

Regards,

Kristin

adamsmith

but as I said - if you're getting anything in addition - titles, initials, firstnames - that's likely a problem of how you entered this in Zotero.

KKeam

I haven't entered anything myself. I just click on the little symbol on the page and Zotero saves it.

adamsmith

yeah, you can't rely on auto-import to do everything correctly all the time. You need to check yourself.