shortcut to add new citation to Word 2016 Mac

Hi all,

The new tab in Zotero 5.0 in Word is really making Add New citation hard work - has anyone figured out a keyboard shortcut to Add a new citation?

The few hits on the topic go to a page not ready message.

The old buttons at the top of the document were better but a tear off floating ribbon would be ideal. Pretty please ;-)

Thanks in advance.
  • Can you be more specific about what your exact problem is? Do you see the Zotero tab in the ribbon? What happens when you click the Add Citation button?
  • Hi thanks, (sorry replied to no-reply email doh!)

    Yes it is on ribbon 'now', within its own tab at the end of the ribbon - not the top left of the document as it was conveniently in v4.0. - So annoying (sorry).

    You have to at least 2 more clicks for every citation; to chg the tab and you also have to click Home Tab every time again to format text bold etc. When working on long docs. and for hours and hours those extra clicks add a lot of hand stress if you have RSI.

    (Perhaps libre office has a tear off like Adobe Ill/PS so can have it to hand.)

    So a keyboard shortcut "Add citation" or right click is ideal. Maybe I don't know how it can be mapped in OSX.... glad to be enlightened.

    Alternatively having at the top left of the doc would help

    Best wishes,
    Denise

  • What version of Word are you using? Word 2016 does not allow the sort of floating toolbars that earlier versions did, which is why Zotero creates a tab in the ribbon (this isn't a change from Zotero 4 to 5).

    You can add a keyboard shortcut to any of the Zotero buttons in the Customize Ribbon menu (the main Zotero function is called Add/Edit Citation -- You can find it by looking in the "All Commands" list). I set my keyboard shortcut to be Control+Z (I use a Mac, so Cmd+Z is undo).

    You can also create a custom version of the Home tab in this menu and add the Zotero commands to it if you like.
  • Hi Bwiernik,
    I am on Mac Office 2016 - after a lot of careful looking they are actually under Macros (not All Commands, of which there are a ton) - this might be why my template on saving is calling itself normal.dotm not dotx and asking me to save everytime... any ideas? Thanks
    ps I did create some keyboard shortcuts - excellent!
  • edited November 26, 2017
    You can find them both under Macros and under All Commands (under All Commands it is called Add/Edit Citation). I recommend adding the button to the ribbon using the All Commands entry so that the icon appears properly.

    Edit: Ah, I see that Word has moved the keyboard shortcut menu. The Zotero commands are indeed only located under Macros when setting Keyboard shortcuts.

    Regarding, Normal.dotx, I don’t believe that setting keyboard shortcuts alone should require converting it Normal.dotm, but it’s possible that it might. If all you have changed in Word is setting a shortcut to the Zotero command, it is okay to save it as Normal.dotm.
  • Hi,
    Thanks for confirming the location. When you said the "ribbon properly" did you mean the Zotero tab as it is now or on the active document like it was in 4.0
    I realise you said it wasn't but I have a screenshot of it that I sent a friend to show her how easy it is too use and now the 4 small (red lines, refresh) icons under the ribbon are gone, unless it was a second ribbon... do you have a generic email I can post it to?

    the normal.dotm showed up a few hours after I installed 5.0 (not shortcuts) and since the Add/Edit was under macros I thought maybe it is a macro??? I am rather new at all this and never touch default settings if I can help it.
    I will keep googling - I checked the Tools and Macros in Word and there aren't any (which could be a virus) so I am trying to replace it with a normal.dotx - however the .dotm is greyed out so I can't delete it. Nevermind if it isn't really your area. :-)
  • No need to google. I’ll walk you through what the various versions of the Zotero plugin you might have seen are doing—but it’s late here in Belgium so I will get back to you tomorrow.
  • edited November 28, 2017
    Okay, so here's how this works. The Zotero Word plugin consists of five macros -- Add/Edit Citation, Add/Edit Bibliography, Refresh, Document Preferences, and Unlink Citations (in older versions of the plugin, the Add/Edit macros were each split into separate functions).

    In previous versions of Words, the Zotero commands were added to the AppleScript menu (Word 2008) or as a floating toolbar (Word 2011). The current version of Word, which you have, Word 2016, does not allow add-ins to create floating toolbars like that. Instead, any add-in toolbar is added to the "Add-ins" tab. Because the floating toolbar functionality is gone, Zotero's plugin for Word 2016 instead creates a new Zotero tab, which allows it to use better looking and larger icons.

    To assign a keyboard shortcut to the Zotero commands, you go to Tools → Customize Keyboard. Then click Macros and select the Zotero Command you want to use (typically AddEditCitation).

    Ignore what I said about above about selecting the commands for the Ribbon or Quick Access Toolbar above—it seems that adding Add-in commands to Ribbon or QAT toolbar is broken in Word currently (they don't stay when you click OK). So, the only option is to add them from the Macros menu (but note that they won't have icons and, for the QAT, also won't save any name or label you give to them—again broken parts of the Customize Ribbon/QAT feature in Word currently).

    I looked into the question of the Normal template. On Word 2016, Normal should be Normal.dotm by default. You can see this if you move or rename Normal.dotm from your Word Templates folder, then restart Word. Word will recreate a new empty Normal.dotm template file (not Normal.dotx). When you assign a keyboard shortcut to the Zotero macro, it gets saved in Normal.dotm, which is fine and perfectly safe.

    Edit: If you want to share a picture, save it to a free image hosting site like Dropbox or Imgur or similar and paste a link here.
  • Sorry to resurrect this thread: After having installed Word 2016 and the Zotero plugin, I then added the keyboard commands.
    After once quitting Word the next time it gives me an error about not being able to write Normal.dotm. I have now done all this twice with the same result. When I trash Normal.dotm it restarts, but without the key commands.

  • My Mac 2016 is also still asking everytime I open and close that it can't find the normal.dotm ( I may go back to Open Office as it has the tear off ribbon).

    I was given this from one of our Endnote/Word teachers. I realise this is a grey area for Zotero support.

    I am not sure why it keeps asking me if I want to save changes everytime I close Word as I didn't (knowingly) make any changes. It had these suggestions which I will try over the weekend and I send them in case it is helpful to you - since you support Mac and Word. Thanks again!

    "Are we definitely talking about the Normal template (not the same thing as the Normal style within a given template)?

    Here is one thing to check:
    You don’t want your styles to auto-update.
    Do this with one of the troublesome documents open.
    In the Options (could be Preferences with Mac), choose the category Add-Ins. Use the drop-down list to select Manage Templates and click Go. In the Templates dialog, notice that it names the template that your current document is attached to. Make sure that Automatically update document styles is unchecked.

    If still puzzled, here is a different experiment to do:
    Replace (temporarily) your Normal.dotm with a generic template, and see what that reveals.
    Identify where your Normal.dotm is saved. With Word closed, so using Finder or similar, rename Normal.dotm something else such as MyOldNormal.dotm. Now start Word. Word goes looking for the Normal.dotm but doesn’t find it, so it creates a new generic one with standard settings and style definitions. Now try redefining the style that was annoying you with wrong font. Is that more well-behaved? In light of that, consider using the new Normal template or one derived from it, instead of the original one. If not happy, close Word and throw away the new Normal.dotm that has been created and re-rename the old one to the proper name Normal.dotm.

    P.S. I love Zotero!
  • I just updated to the latest version of Word, and it now seems to work just fine.
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