If you want formatted references in a text, you could also just copy&paste a bibliography to Word (using right-click --> create bibliography) and then use the text-->table conversion in Word.
Same problem though in that they won't be linked to Zotero -- generally, lots of linked references in a single table often turn out to be problematic. Word doesn't handle fields in tables very well.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Can you describe exactly what you want with an an example?

And what style are you using?

I’d recommend inserting these as regular citations using the word processor plugin. You can insert them in the form Author (Year) by using Suppress Author in the Add Citation window. This would be the way to get the reference list at the end to automatically update. There isn’t a way to insert multiple citations into different table cells at one time that will also have an automatically updating reference list.

If you like, you can modify the .csl style file to use the Author (Year) format instead of (Author, Year). That would save having to use Suppress Author, but you would need to edit the tables and manuscript text in separate documents. I can walk you through those changes if you like.

If you don’t mind manually updating the reference list, there are some ways to use Excel and a custom CSL style to speed up the citation inserting process.

Out of curiosity, is this for a systematic review or meta-analysis?

With that many sources, I wouldn’t use the Word plugin. Add a CODED tag to all of the references in your review. If you add or remove a source, adjust the tag accordingly.

Then, filter your library on this tag, select all, right-click and Create Bibliography from Selection. Choose a style with a Short Bibliogrpahy format (I am away from the computer, but can post a link to one later today or tomorrow). Paste this list in Word, select them all, and use Word’s covert text to table function. Then continue to add your other data. (You can also just simply paste into Excel and enter your other data there. This is what I would recommend to make the data easier to consume for readers.)

Then, Create Bibliogrpahy again in Zotero and use the Elsevier APA style that the journal requests.

This method requires manually exporting the Bibliogrpahy, but is much faster than inserting one by one into Word using the plugin. The CODED tag makes it easy to track the items that need to be in the Bibliogrpahy. If you later need to add or remove an item, you just delete the existing one and re-export it from Zotero.

Thanks for your answer, I will try your style. I'm not tied to any journal requirements so I'm quite free there, it's more about readability.
How do you deal with multiple tags then? My screening process consists of several questions.

Thanks, this is useful!

I'm working on a preprint/journal article on that topic. If you search for my name and either "systematic review" or "meta-analysis", there are about a dozen posts I've made over the years talking about my workflow.

If there are any specific questions about various steps in the process you'd like me to address, please let me know!