Endnote features I miss

m4rouf

I've played around quite a bit with a few different reference managers over the past couple of weeks and I think the best managers were Zotero and Endnote. I've chosen to go with Zotero but there are just a few things about Endnote that I miss:

- The ability to view/edit my citations in MS word without having to find and click on each one in turn, e.g. to add in page numbers or see how many times something was cited

-[EDIT: Just realised that using the new citation view rather than the classic one lets you do this] The ability to get taken from a specific reference in MS word to the corresponding one in Zotero, e.g. to add in missing fields or to view full notes or PDF attachments. At the moment, I get taken to a citation window that only lets me view the main details of a reference but to actually edit the reference or to view any attachments, I need to launch the main Zotero library window and search for it manually

- The ability to cite something in MS Word directly from the Zotero library interface. Maybe I'm just missing something here but it seems that formatted references can only be added by clicking the insert citation toolbar in MS Word. In Endnote, it's possible to insert citations directly into Word from the reference manager by simply clicking a button after highlighting the relevant references. A copy and paste would be fine too but that doesn't seem to work with the automatic formatting.

I really hope these features can be considered for future releases. Other than these points, I think Zotero is brilliant. I've already used it for one of my projects and I've got a huge project coming up for which I'm actually looking forward to referencing, thanks to Zotero :).

damnation

Have you tried Mendeley? By far my favourite.

m4rouf

I actually have but the reason I like Endnote is because it integrates really well with MS Word (and Pages). Both Zotero and Mendeley seem to fall short here.

bwiernik

1) I'm not exactly sure what you mean here. Could you clarify?

2) As you note, this feature is available in the default Quick Citation window.

3) The problem with this feature is what should happen when you have multiple Word documents open. I found it very frustrating when I used Endnote that it would often insert the reference into the wrong document. An alternative would be to have a button in Word to insert the currently selected references in the Zotero window (this way there would be no ambiguity about which document should get the references). Dan Stillman, Zotero's lead developer, has expressed general support for this idea, and it might be implemented in a future update to the Word plugin, but no timeline for it being added is available.

ben_a

Number 3 is the feature I miss from Endnote the most. I would love to see a button to add the currently selected reference(s)

m4rouf

Sorry, I guess I didn't make my first point very clear. In Endnote, you can click a toolbar button to manage all of your citations from a single interface. You can add in / change cited page numbers, you can click on a citation to get taken to the right place in the word document, and you can see a count of how many times the same reference was cited in the document.

With zotero, you have to find the citation in your word document and place the cursor over it before it can be edited. You can only edit one citation at a time. You can't view an overview of all the citations from a single interface.