preserving rich text formating (italics) in citations

carolinejudy
I noticed that rich text formating in citations, specifically, italicized words in titles of journal articles, are not preserved when imported from Endnote. Everything is converted to plain text. Is there a way to import citations without loosing this formating?

In addition, when adding citations manually, I cannot find a way to manually italicize individual words. This is a problem as I work in organismal biology and many titles include scientific names that need to be italicized.

Thanks!
  • adamsmith
    using Endnote XML should preserve italics (i.e. convert them to html <i> tags, which is what Zotero currently uses so that they show up correctly in citations. RIS does not allow for rich text.

    https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/rich_text_bibliography
    explains how to do this manually. Something nicer is planned, but this works well.
  • carolinejudy
    Hi thanks -

    I gave it a try, but encountered a problem using Endnote XML format. After importing a single reference in this style (Endnote XML), I noticed that the new zotero reference had a warning message attached to the citation. (The following values have no corresponding Zotero field:number: 2label: r03388)

    When, in Word, I tried adding this citation to a document, I got a warning message:
    Zotero experienced an error updating your document.
    The operation couldn't be completed. (OSStatus error -1728.) @[setTextRaw:field.m:522]

    Thanks in advance for any help troubleshooting this.
    Caroline
  • adamsmith
    The note with the not-imported field is normal, that's not actually a warning (in RIS it's disabled by default, we should probably add that to Endnote XML, too), it's just a note to preserve data not otherwise imported.

    The error message is not normal, of course. That's with the regular, red-rimmed insert citation dialog in the Word add-on? And it also happens with a new Word document? Could you copy&paste the title of that item from Zotero here?
  • carolinejudy
    Hi Adam,

    Yes, it's with the regular, red-rimmed insert citation dialog in the word for mac add-on. But it looks like there was a separate problem. When I followed up by opening a new word document, I got a pop up error message:

    "Zotero could not load the component required to communicate with your word processor. Please ensure that the appropriate extension is installed and try again."

    Not sure what the problem was, but, I tried closing and opening both programs (using Finder), and now the citation opens fine and the italics are correctly displayed!

    I'm copying the title of that item from zotero:
    Gill, F. B., F. J. Stokes, and C. Stokes. 1973. Contact zones and hybridization in the Jamaican Hummingbird, Trochilus polytmus (L.). The Condor 75:170–176.

    "Trochilus polytmus" is italicized.

    Can tell me what the pop up error message was caused by? Thanks!
    C
  • adamsmith
    not exactly, but it sounds like a glitch most likely in Word -- especially if you're on Word 2016, that's still a bit buggy. Unless this happens again, I wouldn't worry about it, especially since it resolved without any loss of data.

    So you're good now?

    Note that all the "no corresponding fields" notes will have a tag _EndnoteXML import
    which you can use to quickly delete them if you don't need the content (select the tag, then hit cmd+a to select all notes in the middle panel and delete them with the "delete" button).
  • carolinejudy
    Thanks, and yes, problem resolved!

    So, do you use cmd+a on a mac? Interestingly doing that selects everything but the "no corresponding fields" notes...

    C
  • adamsmith
    I use ctrl+a on linux, but it does the same thing. Are you sure it's not just an unusual highlighting? What happens if you delete after cmd+a (you can always restore from the Zotero trash if things go wrong).
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