add author-date citation within text of footnote not possible with MSword-plug-in?

olaf

Hi,

I run into the following problem: I want to add an citation in author-date format into the Text of an footnote (i.e. not the citation as a footnote but as a reference within the text of an footnote). The Zotero-plug-in in MS-word responds with an message, that says "Zotero fields are not possible at this place" (my translation from German text). When I try to insert a citation in the main-text zotero works and the selection-bar for a citation appears.

Is this considered a normal behaviour of the plug-in and if so, is there a work-around for the problem? I guess this behaviour maybe is caused by the capability of Zotero to switch a document between author-date and citation in footnote format and obviously a footnote within a footnote would not make sense.

To be more specific on the tecnical constellation I run into trouble:

Software:
MS Windows 7 Pro 64bit, MS Word 2010 v. 14.0.7180... 64bit, Firefox 53.0 (32bit), Zotero 4.0.29.16, Zotero Word for Windows integration 3.5.6.

Document Settings:
Chicago Manual of Style 16th Editon (author-date) with Format Setting to "Lesezeichen"/reading marks (i.e. not "Felder"/fields because I use at home LibreOffice under Linux and need to be able editing my document on both systems) and the option "store citations in the document". Language Setting of the Document and Zotero is German.

Thanks for any help or advice
Olaf

bwiernik

This is because you are using Bookmarks. Bookmarks in Word do not interact well with footnotes (I believe because Bookmarks are tied to a specific spot in the document, unlike fields, and footnotes are technically in a completely different location). You can insert a citation into the main body of your document, then cut and paste into the footnote. This will generally work, though I can't guarantee that the citation/bibliography will continue to update automatically properly (e.g., the bibliography may be missing this reference) and I can almost guarantee that ibid (if your version of Chicago uses it) won't interact with the footnoted reference.

adamsmith

(The reason this doesn't work is even simpler: at least LibreOffice simply doesn't allow bookmarks in Footnotes at all; not sure about Word, but it'd break the citations once you open it in LO any way).

olaf

Ok, that means, I have to decide wether I want interoperability between MS Word and LibreOffice or capability of citation in footnotes.
If I would opt for the latter, would Zotero support the transformation from Bookmarks to MSword Fields resp. ReferenceMarks in LO? And once done that, is there any way back to change the document from LO to MSword or vice versa? (obviously LO runs on all three platforms I use - Win, Mac, Linux - and thus would be the first choice. But still especially when editing and rearranging text in the wordprocessor LO is far less productive and userfriendly at least to my way of working on text)

adamsmith

Zotero can just transfrom from Bookmarks to Fields/Reference Marks, yes, so that part is easy.

But I don't see a way to move the document from LO to Word (or vice versa) with citations in footnotes, sorry.

olaf

Thanks, at least a clear decision to be made...

bwiernik

Running Word and Zotero in Wine on your Linux system might be a possibility.

adamsmith

(though a bit of a mess to get Word integration running, IIRC)