Position of Zotero tab in MS word ribbon

ben_a
Hi, is there any way to control where the Zotero tab sits in MS word? If I go to customise ribbon I can re-order tabs but the Zotero tab is not shown there.

I have found lately that the Zotero tab moves around - the other day it was in first position before the Home tab, today it is second after the Home tab before the insert tab. This is very annoying.
  • ben_a
    Can anyone help with this?
  • dstillman
    edited June 23, 2025
    I'm not aware of any way to customize this, but add-in tabs should only ever be at the end of the ribbon after the built-in tabs, so something strange is happening if you're seeing it elsewhere.
  • ben_a
    Thanks for your reply. Yes, the tab is normally towards the end of the ribbon, today I loaded word and again, it is at the start.
    https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u3005491/zhvivrtk26m4apyb1jwh.png
  • dstillman
    Do you have other add-ins?

    No idea if this could help, but you could try moving your existing Normal.dotm out of the way and see if that makes a difference.
  • ben_a
    Thanks, I tried moving Normal.dotm, no change.

    Yes I have other addins, Docusign and Adobe Acrobat.

    It wouldn't surprise me if Acrobat is causing the issue, the add in is really annoying - it creates an Acrobat tab but also buttons in the home tab. I've tried removing the buttons in the home tab but they just keep coming back.
  • dstillman
    You can try temporarily disabling or removing those add-ins to see if that makes a difference.
  • ben_a
    OK I tried disabling the adobe acrobat add in but it didn't help. I can't even find an add in called docusign.

    I went in to customise the ribbon and clicked the option to reset all customisations to the ribbon - that moved the zotero tab back to where it should be.

    I'll keep monitoring it, see if it moves again.
  • ARHamilton
    edited July 10, 2025
    I'm also having this problem.
    Until a couple of months ago the Zotero tab was on the tight, next to Acrobat.
    Suddenly it is on the left and I cannot move it (it doesn't even appear in customise ribbon).
    I have no idea why. Could it be an 'upgrade' to MS Office?

    I went to customise ribbon and unselected the new "Blog Post" item that has appeared there recently - and Zotero promptly moved to the right....fingers crossed that fixed it?
  • tolung
    Use
    Office RibbonX Editor (https://github.com/fernandreu/office-ribbonx-editor/releases/tag/v1.9.0)
    to open
    %AppData%\Microsoft\Word\Startup\Zotero.dotm
    go to
    customUI.xml
    and change
    insertBeforeMso="TabAddIns"
    to
    insertAfterMso="TabAddIns"

    if this does not work, change it to (assuming you have these Word Add-in tabs installed by those software):

    insertAfterMso="TabEndNote"
    or
    insertAfterMso="TabAcrobat"

    or whatever tab you have at the end, I guess?

    My guess for the root cause of this issue is that MS might have made a change to Word such that the TabAddIns identifier may not be recognised by the Zotero dotm script anymore, and that may be the issue for the misplacement of the Zotero tab.

    Let me know if this works for you.

    Cheers,
    DrGT
Sign In or Register to comment.