Do I need Standalone?

IsaakM

Hi,
I'm new to Zotero. I use the Firefox plugin to "grab" citations directly from websites. Since I'm using MS-Word 2013, I understood that I have to use the standalone version as well, since the Word plugin will only work with the standalone version, right?

Will everything I do in the Firefox plugin be synced with the standalone version? For example: if I add an Citation Style by going to the Zotero Citation Repository and clicking a CSL file, will it be available in the plugin and the standalone version?

adamsmith

No. If you use the Firefox add-on, you don't need Standalone. There is nothing Standalone does that the Firefox add-on cannot.

You just need to install Word integration as another Firefox add-on.

(You _can_ use Standalone together with Firefox. By default they share the same data directory, so yes to your question about syncing, but they don't share the same styles, so you'd need to download CSL styles and install them to Standalone)

LiborA

1. NO, MS Word work with firefox plugin too.

2. YES partially. Items added through Firefox plugin are synced with standalone version. But not styles and plugins.

EDIT: adamsmith was quicker

IsaakM

Thanks!

nicolealpert

I had this question as well - can we not use the two concurrently?

If I already installed Standalone and the Zotero FF extension, which should I remove? I probably don't need the standalone. I found that the directories are pointing to the same place, but my Zotfile isn't working to point the PDF storage to the file I specified...

adamsmith

As I said -- you can use them concurrently (the question here was whether you _have_ to). You need to have ZotFile installed (and with the same setup) in both the Firefox and the Standalone version if you want consistent behavior, though.

nicolealpert

Many thanks. I've worked it out.