Find refs when working in Word

zhengliatynu
For the function of 'add citation' in Word, is it possible to use 'XXX et al., 20XX' to locate the reference using the red search bar? I know it is ok to use 'name year' to search, but this is problematic for some Chinese names, as many people (some are just middle name authors) share the same surname. In other words, is that possible to use the first author's name only to find a ref. This is a possibly better way to work on Word documents, as we can always first simply type 'XXX et al., 20XX' as plain texts for citations in a ms, and then easily add citations using Zotero by copying 'XXX et al., 20XX' to the red search bar.
  • adamsmith
    The Xs are confusing -- what you are asking is whether you can search just by first author (by adding et al.), right?
    That's an interesting idea.
    Note that you can do this in the classic add citation dialog simply by sorting by the author column and starting to type (though of course the dialog has other disadvantages).
  • zhengliatynu
    Yes, you understand me correctly. I mean, for example, 'Smith et al., 2022'. I believe for many people it is natural to first write down a citation like this in Word.
  • dstillman
    I'm not totally clear why this would be necessary. The citation dialog already sorts left-bound name matches for the surname of the first author to the beginning of the search results, so you can already search for "Smith" and get all the papers by Smiths first, before any papers where Smith isn't the first author.
  • zhengliatynu
    Hi dstillmann, please note this is very problematic for some Chinese/Japanese family names. For example, for the surname Zhang, usually it will give so many papers, and it is very difficult to find the needed one. But when I type 'Zhang 2020' to narrow the list down, it shows papers with Zhang as a middle name author. Also, it is typical for people to use the first author's surname and the year to locate a ref in a reference list. So I still believe this is something to improve.
  • dstillman
    But when I type 'Zhang 2020' to narrow the list down, it shows papers with Zhang as a middle name author.
    Right, but then this is the bug. We're always happy to talk about solving problems people are having, but it's much better to explain actual problems you're facing rather than proposing specific solutions. It doesn't sound like this has anything to do with "et al." — and having "et al." force a first-author search wouldn't (or shouldn't) help in a situation where there was a paper with only one author.

    It sounds like the problem here is just that if you include a year it no longer tries to match the first author's surname first. We'll look into fixing that.
  • zhengliatynu
    It is great to hear that you are going to fix it. Well. I did not consider this is a bug as some people might also want to find a paper not using the first author's name. Please understand the 'et al' thing is just my suggestion. As we often simply write 'Smith et al., 2022' when drafting a paper, and then add citations using Zotero before submission. So it is easier for us to simply copy 'Smith et al., 2022' to the dialog. Of course, for papers with only one author, we write 'Smith, 2002' in the draft. So the copy/paste operation will still work.
  • dstillman
    I did not consider this is a bug as some people might also want to find a paper not using the first author's name.
    They'll be able to. Again, the issue is just what gets sorted first in the search results.
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