How do I add date accessed to website citations?

pamathew

Hello,
I'm new to zotero and I'm trying to add data accessed to a website citation, i.e. so that the citation includes "Accessed August 2020". There is an "Accessed" field but that does not seem to work (it does not save it when I enter it there).

Any suggestions?

Thanks
Paul

dstillman

You can type "now" or "today" in the field, but if you find yourself needing to do that, you're likely using Zotero wrong. Webpages should never be entered manually — you should be saving from the Zotero Connector, which automatically populates the Accessed field. (That's also the reason "Web Page" isn't offered as an option from the New Item menu.)

Read through Adding Items to Zotero for more info. You should almost never need to add items to Zotero manually.

adamsmith

Or is this about the citations? That depends on the citation style. Some citation styles, such as Chicago Manual and APA, have gone away from generally requiring access dates. Which style are you using?

dstillman

(The Accessed field will only accept dates in a certain format via manual entry — because it's not really intended for manual entry — and Paul says it's not saving, so I assume it's about the field.)