Google Docs and blue underlined citation

rutyggi
When I insert a citation in Google Docs using Google Chrome browser, the citation is displayed as normal text, in black color.

When I select the text and click on the "Normal text" style, the citation style changes: it turn blue and underlined.

Can I have the blue and underlined style directly without having to click on "Normal Text"?
  • adomasven
    Zotero citations in Google Docs are actually in-text links. You can see this by selecting "Insert Link" from the the Google Docs toolbar while over a Zotero citation. That is the reason it changes appearance when you change its style to "Normal text". There is no way to have them appear like that by default.
  • rutyggi
    Shouldn't the style be "Normal text" by default?

    Why I have to change the style to "Normal text"?

    What is the default style?
  • adomasven
    edited May 12, 2021
    So specifically the text of Zotero citations is "Normal text" with the following changes:
    - Underline removed
    - Text color changed to black from blue

    Other "Normal text" modifications apply.

    Otherwise I do not know what you're asking. What are you trying to achieve and what is problem?
  • rutyggi
    The problem is that I imported a document converted by Word in ODT format, because Google Docs could not open the original docx format

    The ODT document converted the citation in text.

    Now I am reinserting the citation as citation.

    When I do that, they stay with the normal text-like style.

    Instead the underlined blu let me know that the citation is now a citation.

    Why Zotero cannot use the default styles of the document, instead of changing the colorto black and removing the underline?
  • adomasven
    See Moving Documents with Zotero Citations Between Word Processors. You shouldn't need to manually reinsert the citations.

    Zotero makes citations appear like normal text, because that's what they are/should be for publishing purposes.
  • rutyggi
    Google Docs was not opening my docx files. Probably an incompatibility.

    I think it would be really useful to have a visual way to quickly identify in the document what is a citation and what isn't, so that I'm sure that every paper is in the bibliography.

    This can be a Zotero preference, like "show citations" which would unerline and make them blue. Unselecting the option would make them non-unerlined and black again.

    This is my two cents :)
  • rutyggi
    edited May 12, 2021
    @adomasven by the way in published research often the year of the citation is in blue color.
  • bwiernik
    When you place the cursor in a Zotero citation, there is a popup indicating it is a Zotero citation. Google Docs has much more limited display features compared to Word or LibreOffice. In the desktop word processors, it's possible to display field text with shading that isn't printed or saved when a PDF is made. This isn't possible in Google Docs.
  • richlv
    Would it be possible to have a toggle to mark/unmark the citations, as rutyggi suggested?
    I'm reviewing a document and turning manual citations in Zotero-managed ones, and just clicking them one by one is extremely time-consuming (and the popup frequently fails to show up even for active citations, thus slowing everything down further).
  • adomasven
    Would it be possible to have a toggle to mark/unmark the citations, as rutyggi suggested?
    There is no way for Zotero to do this. However you can select a piece of text in your document and use the Google Docs `Clear formatting` option to reveal Zotero citations as blue underlined links (since behind the scenes the citations are stored partially as links). You probably don't want to actually remove the formatting from your document, so you should use Undo (Ctrl-z or Cmd-z) to go back to proper formatting.
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