pdf annotations not copying with linked in-text citations (Zotero 6)

amysix

When I highlight a sentence in a pdf, I can see that I can copy-paste the highlight (or drag it) into Word or gdocs and it automatically adds quotation marks and the in-text citation - e.g. (Author, 2022, p. 10) - at the end of the sentence. So cool! So useful!

But, whether I copy-paste or drag in the highlight, it seems that the whole thing is text-only, so it's not linked to Zotero. (I can add linked in-text cites in Word or gdocs by clicking "add/edit citation"). The in-text citation appears to be linked in the Notes pane, but dragging or copying from there creates the same behavior that the link is gone and it's only plain text.

Please let me know if there's anything I can do to make this work, it seems like it would be a fantastic feature. Thanks for any help!

P.S.
I have selected "Markdown + Rich Text" as the Quick Copy format for Notes.

When I paste as "text-only" on purpose, it looks like this:
“quotation here.” ([Solove, 2013, p. 1898](zotero://select/library/items/GEK4WNNB)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/DWIDMFSN?page=20&annotation=IULP4Z66))

dstillman

Citations use Word fields, which can't be created via copy/paste or dragging. (This is why Quick Copy has never created actual active Zotero citations.)

Instead, add annotations to Zotero notes and use the new Add Note button to insert the note into your document with active citations.

If there's demand, we might make it possible in a future version to insert individual annotations via the word processor plugin, but currently the idea is that you create a note first with multiple annotations/citations, possibly start writing around them, and add the note to the document all at once.

amysix

I see, thanks for explaining that.

One follow-up question: So the previous version of Zotero did not allow users to copy active links from Notes into Word/gdocs either, is that correct?

It would be super useful for my workflow if it functioned as I described -- I tend to highlight many things in a pdf (say, 10-20) but ultimately only pull 1 or 2 into a document. Also, I often go back to a pdf while writing a document to find just one quotation I want to pull in.

So for me, and I think a lot of users, being able to just copy-paste one sentence, with a linked citation, into a doc, would be amazing, if it ever were to become possible. Just 4 steps: select passage>copy>click over to word>paste. It's also intuitive for most users I think. :) If there's a place to make that a feature request, please lmk. Or to formally register my "demand" ;) for the individual annotation import feature you describe.

With the note method, there are quite a few more steps: add new item note (or add to an existing note with lots of others you'll need to delete)>select passage>add to note>click over to word>add note>select note from a list (most of which are named "Annotations" by default, thus hard to distinguish).

Thanks!

amysix

I had some other ideas for features related to importing a Note into a document:

- more customization for "Add item note from annotations." Let users specify "all" annotations OR select specific types (e.g. only green highlights) to pull into a note. If this was possible, I could choose different colors based on whether I think I might actually use the quotation vs. just highlighting to be able to skim the doc later for key findings or whatever.

- Make the default name of a note meaningful. For example, it could be "Annotations of [Author, date, first 5 words of title] on [today's date]" so it's easier to find in the pop-up selector window.

Please lmk if there's somewhere else I should post feature requests. Thanks for considering.

dstillman

So the previous version of Zotero did not allow users to copy active links from Notes into Word/gdocs either, is that correct?

Notes before Zotero 6 didn't support citations, so there was nothing to copy.

It would be super useful for my workflow if it functioned as I described

But what I'm saying is that it's not possible — as in, there's no way on a technical level for Zotero to create Word fields via copy/paste or dragging, which is why Quick Copy never did this.

(There's a very low-level way we might be able to support this at some point in the future, at least on some platforms, but it would take a lot of work, and we'd have to investigate further to see if there's even any chance of doing that.)

Let users specify "all" annotations OR select specific types (e.g. only green highlights) to pull into a note.

This has been requested, but for now you can just open the PDF in the reader, click the color to filter by in the bottom of the annotations sidebar, do a Select All, and add those to a note.

Make the default name of a note meaningful.

The ability to customize the title is planned, but we'll consider a more unique default title.

You can start new, individual threads for other feature requests.

dstillman

(The Add Note dialog will also likely start showing the parent item title, which would lessen the need for a unique note title.)

amysix

Thanks for explaining all that, I appreciate it.