Copying text from Zotero to Word with citation included

christelle868
I used to be able to copy text from Zotero to Word with citation at the end automatically included in the Author, Date, Page# format. I was bubbling around trying to fix another problem, so I assume I changed a setting somewhere and now I only get the text pasting into Word. Does anyone know what setting I changed?
  • dstillman
    edited February 26, 2023
    You can use the word processor plugin's Add Note button to add Zotero notes to your document with active Zotero citations from PDF annotations you've added to the notes.

    https://www.zotero.org/blog/zotero-6/#adding_notes_to_word_processors
  • christelle868
    Thanks much, dstillman!
  • aykutpurde
    Thank you for the question christelle, I have this problem too.

    @dstillman, what i want to ask is this: before, i used to be able to copy a text from a zotero note and paste it to word with the citation. i know i can use add note from zotero plugin but most of the time just copy pasting as i am already working with the note is more convenient.

    just a simple question: how to copy+paste from zotero to word with citation included? it was possible before but now it does not work like that and pastes without the citation.
  • dstillman
    There's some confusion here. Just copying text from a Zotero note has never automatically added a citation to Word.

    Before Zotero 6, if you used ZotFile to extract annotations to notes, it added citations to the note with links back to the PDF. You can get similar (but more flexible) behavior from Zotero 6 by enabling "Include Zotero Links" for "Rich Text/HTML" in the Quick Copy section of the Export pane of the settings. (That's already enabled by default when you copy to a plain-text editor as Markdown.)

    But that's just about the backlink, not the citation. Zotero 6 already adds a citation to the text when you add an annotation to a note, and if you select that when you copy, that's what you'll get when you paste, regardless of the "Include Zotero Links" setting.

    And none of this gets you the kind of active Zotero citations you get from the Word plugin. It's just not currently technically possible to get that via copy/paste. So if you're using the Word plugin, you'll want to use Add Note, as I say above.
  • aykutpurde
    This is very confusing indeed. I am %100 sure that I was able to open the note in Zotero, copy the text and paste it directly to Word and it would give me the footnote too. I have written around 30-40 pages of my text like that, so I am %100 sure.

    maybe I just can't express myself well in English so you don't understand, sorry for that :(

    As I paste now, I get this in Word: “Human rights law and remedies are specifically helpful to protect environmental interests, because they are widely recognized in both international and national law” (Savaresi, 2020, p. 235).

    Before, I used to get that citation directly as a footnote, this is what I mean. And you say that was never the case and I am very confused :D
  • adamsmith
    Sorry, but absolutely, you never did this with Zotero. I know you say you're sure, but Zotero simply has not been able to do anything remotely close, ever.

    What you could have done (and still can, though it's not recommended) is copy *just* a citation, completely independent of a note, from Zotero.
  • aykutpurde
    I need to see a doctor I guess :D

    How about adding multiple notes to Word? Like the classic view for citations, is something like that possible through Word or Zotero?
  • dstillman
    No, Add Note currently only adds one note at a time.
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