How to integrate Zotero citations with classical MS word citations

GWI_Literatur
Hi.
We are working on documents with several partners from different institutions. Some of them still use classical MS Word citation.

Is Zotero able to integrate those citations that are embedded in the Word file with the table of references that Zotero produces? (automatically modifying the MS word entries leading to the same style and everything that I define in Zotero?) This would be so great.

I think in the past there was a button "embed references in word when saving", but this button or check-box I cannot find anymore in the last months.

Thanks for any hint!


Johannes
  • bwiernik
    No, Word’s and Zotero’s citation systems are completely incompatible, and they don’t integrate with each other. Word’s system is very limited and produces incorrect citations in many cases, and I recommend you avoid it. I recommend you suggest that one author using Zotero handle the formal insertion of citations. Other authors can insert placeholders (e.g., CITE with the reference details like title, authors, and DOI in a comment). You have to manually type the reference details into Word’s system, so this won’t be much more effort for those users anyway.

    If you are using a style that sorts the bibliography alphabetically, you could insert references with both systems, then use Word’s sort feature at the end to merge the two separate bibliographies. But this won’t necessarily yield correct references (Word’s are often wrong) and won’t correctly handle things like disambiguation or using “et al” the second time an item is cited.

    (That checkbox isn’t relevant here, but it’s gone because it is always checked now. It just embeds the item data in the document for Zotero to use.)
  • GWI_Literatur
    Thank you, bwiernik, for your helpful, yes devestating answer ;-)
    Our hopes were quite high ;-) Well, so it is 2019 and still one author has to manually put together citations. Sigh.

    We can at least try to make our partners use some software and send the bibtex file. It's a pity that many companies / institutes forbid certain software solutions leading to tons of extra work. But that is cleary not a Zotero shortcoming.

    Thanks and all the best
    Johannes
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