Copying over from PDF and bibliography

annaliddle · September 2, 2022

Hi all,

I am new to Zotero, having abandoned the Mendeley ship yesterday.

I was excited to see the feature where you can copy from a PDF in your library to a Word document and have the reference come too. However, when I try and generate the bibliography it doesn't recognise that there are any references. Is there something I am doing wrong?

Thank you!
Anna

dstillman · September 2, 2022

First, make sure you have a parent item with metadata, not just a PDF:

https://www.zotero.org/support/adding_items_to_zotero#adding_pdfs_and_other_files

And then, if you're using Word, you want to use the Word plugin, not Quick Copy:

https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_usage

annaliddle · September 5, 2022

Thank you for this. I have got the Word plug-in, but it doesn't seem to bring over the reference for the bibliography. I also think I have the metadata. Is it the case, then, that it can't generate a bibliography item from Quick Copy?

Thank you again.

dstillman · September 5, 2022

Yes, you need to use the Word plugin to insert citations. See the page I linked to above, which explains this in detail.

annaliddle · September 5, 2022

Great thanks. I have been doing that, I just wasn't sure if I was missing something from the quick copy. If it was ever possible to get the quick copy synching to the bibliography that would be amazing. Quick copy is a fantastic feature in itself though.

dstillman · September 5, 2022

Note that you can assign a shortcut key to Add/Edit Citation, and you can use the classic citation dialog if you want an items-list view of your items. There’s not really much advantage to Quick Copy.

https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_shortcuts