In the latest Zotero beta, citations added to a word processor document by Mendeley Desktop can be automatically relinked to Zotero items imported from Mendeley.

For years, Zotero has been able to read Mendeley citations in a document, making them available for reuse in the Cited section of the citation dialog search results and including them in the bibliography. Those citations wouldn't be linked to items in a Zotero library, though, even for people who used Zotero's Mendeley importer.

With the latest beta, it's possible to import a Mendeley library into Zotero, open a word processor document previously used with that Mendeley library, and just continue working. Edits made to the imported items in the Zotero library will be reflected in the document, and inserting the imported item from the library will treat it as the same item for citation purposes.

Mendeley citations use a different item identifier that Zotero didn't previously pull in, so if you previously used the Mendeley importer, you'll need to re-run the importer using the beta (or the release version of this when it comes out) if you want to automatically relink citations. We've added a new option to import only new items, and if you leave that enabled, Zotero will pull in the new identifiers and let you use this feature without overwriting other changes you've made to items in Zotero. As always, we recommend backing up your database before running the importer to be safe.