Accessing citations from documents prepared by someone else

Hello,

I'm a new user of Zotero and still trying to find my way around things. I used Endnote for a long time, which made it quite easy to have different users using the same document using different computers. Basically, I often get Word documents with Zotero citations/references in it. With Endnote, I could simply re-export the library which is embedded in the file and work with it straight away.


Using Zotero, I haven't found a good way to do this yet. Even if people send me the libraries they prepared, I cannot get the document to link with Zotero. If I try to access the existing citation fields (for example, with 3 references), Zotero doesn't identify the references which are part of that field: (1, 2, 6) for example. Which basically means that I cannot add any references to that citation. If I try to, it ends up as (1, 2, 6)(7).

Am I missing something very obvious? :)

Many thanks in advance for any help
  • I think you're conflating a couple different things here.

    If someone sends you a document in the appropriate file format with citations created with the Zotero plugin, you can continue using those citations without having the original library. Those citations will show up in the citation dialog in the "Cited" section of the search results for inserting elsewhere in the document, and the citations will be reflected in the bibliography. You just can't currently edit the metadata for them or add them to your own Zotero library. (It's possible to extract them into your Zotero library, but the extracted annotations won't be linked to the existing document.)
    If I try to access the existing citation fields (for example, with 3 references), Zotero doesn't identify the references which are part of that field: (1, 2, 6) for example. Which basically means that I cannot add any references to that citation. If I try to, it ends up as (1, 2, 6)(7).
    If you really mean "(7)", you're likely just not putting your cursor within the existing citation before clicking Add/Edit Citation. That's how you add another reference to an existing citation in Zotero — adjacent citations aren't currently merged automatically like in EndNote.

    Alternatively, if you're getting "(1)", that would be a question of the document being saved or sent in the wrong format, and you'd want to see Existing Citations Not Detected.
  • Hey, thanks for the reply. Based on it, I think I might have found the problem...

    If I use the normal view, indeed I can see the citations under "Cited" and can add to them. However, I'm normally using the "Classic view", because it makes it much easier for me to handle multiple citations from different collections and to edit the fields accordingly. This works fine if I was the one preparing the citation fields using my own library, as it allows me to see all the references inside the selected field on the right side menu that shows up if you have the "Multiple Sources" setting enabled on the Add/Edit citation menu that pops up. But if the citations were added by someone else on another computer, they don't show up anywhere on the Classic View menu. If you then try to add anything to an existing field this way, it basically just replaces the citations that are already there... Is this working as intended?
  • Yes, the classic view hasn't been updated in many years, and we recommend using the default dialog whenever possible. A future version of Zotero will provide more options for browsing/searching by collection in the default dialog.
  • OK, shame to know that, but it's great to know that the future version will allow for that, it's the main reason why I currently prefer the classic view

    Cheers for the explanation, that solves the issue


Sign In or Register to comment.