Upgrade StorageGenerate collection from citations in a Word document?
I have written a paper that cites articles from several of my different Zotero collections. I used Microsoft Word with the Zotero plugin.
I would like to have all of these items together as a single collection in Zotero (they're already all in Zotero, but they're scattered across several collections). Is there some way I can go back to the standalone Zotero program and tell it "make a collection consisting of all items cited in this Word document"?
I realize that a straightforward way to do this probably doesn't exist as a feature, since the Zotero plugin for Word is intended to be a one-way thing just for citing. But I am open to creative work-arounds for doing this, if anyone can think of any!
I would like to have all of these items together as a single collection in Zotero (they're already all in Zotero, but they're scattered across several collections). Is there some way I can go back to the standalone Zotero program and tell it "make a collection consisting of all items cited in this Word document"?
I realize that a straightforward way to do this probably doesn't exist as a feature, since the Zotero plugin for Word is intended to be a one-way thing just for citing. But I am open to creative work-arounds for doing this, if anyone can think of any!
1) If there aren't too many citations, you could manually make a collection by opening the Zotero dialog for each citation, clicking on the reference, clicking "Show in My Library", then dragging the item to a collection.
2) If that is too much work, you can install the Juris-M program (http://juris-m.github.io), a Zotero-variant that has this feature implemented using special Document Tags. You could use Juris-M to make a collection, sync, then switch back to using regular Zotero if you like.
@01baftb that plugin in your mentioned solution would have been great. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work with my current version (6.0.36) anymore. You wouldn't happen to know of an update or newer plugin?
ChatGPT example here:
https://x.com/MushtaqBilalPhD/status/1753785908266963066
Since the OP's use case was for references that are already in Zotero - that they now wish to have in one collection - you would then need to merge the duplicates.
You should also check the imported items against the reference list. As a new option that has not been widely tested, ChatGPT might have problems with some bibliography formats more than others.
Thank you for the tip. However, I agree with @adamsmith that it seems like a detour to do this with AI when I have live citations already linked to the sources. Moreover, the word plugin must already have the list stored somewhere to create the bibliography. Thus, going via ChatGPT just adds more work and a lot of room for making mistakes (wrong mappings, duplicates, etc.). And if I have to check everything in the end anyway, I can just manually go through my bibliography in word, search for the respective items in Zotero and add them to a collection (which is what I have been doing until now).
So, yes, I'd much prefer a solution like ref-extractor. Unfortunately, I get an error message, when I try to install it: "The add-on "%S" could not be installed. It may be incompatible with this version of Zotero." (I downloaded the zip-file from https://github.com/rmzelle/ref-extractor#reference-extractor.) Thus, I was looking for another solution. Unless the above error message can be resolved?
If you really want to, you can run your own version of the web app (completely independent of Zotero), but there's really no reason to.
https://rintze.zelle.me/ref-extractor/
Thank you for bearing with me and helping me out nonetheless!
Not sure whether I should continue this thread or start a new one. I have a similar desire to generate a collection from a list of citations not from a word file, but a markdown/ pandoc/ quarto (.qmd) file.
I am not sure how to do it: I would like to share the literature which is currently embedded in a course manual (.qmd file) using citationkeys. I would like to put these in a group library, so that students have access to all the references for the course.
I've started doing it manually, but there are 85 references to search, select, and then drag to a group library. A mechanism would make it easier also to maintain. I guess what I really need is the "select in Zotero" functionality provided by ref-extractor, but from a list of citationkeys.
for info, I tried to create a .aux file to use the aux-scanner (mentioned in https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/340693/#Comment_340693) which was mentioned as a possibility, but that didn't work. I'm still missing the ability to select existing references in my library; it makes new (and incorrect) references.
thanks for any advice!
This is a different story with Word and LibreOffice integration, where Zotero keeps live links to the citations, so extraction via ref-extractor works.
the multiple citationkeys would be my one use case, so @emilianoheyns, I would love to hear if it works or not.
For the record, I wanted to add a link to this discussion (now closed), which discusses zotero://select: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/24241/linking-to-zotero-items-via-zotero-select.