Citation key field is not at top of info section

Wei_Liao · 2026-03-03T04:59:18+00:00

Could the "citation key" field be place at the top of the info section?
This is not convenient to copy the citekey when citing bibs in latex writing. I prefer the previous version in Zotero 7.
Thanks for any replies~

adamsmith · 2026-03-03T05:16:20+00:00

Previous versions of Zotero didn't have a Citation Key field. The BBT plugin placed a pseudo field at the top of the item pane. My understanding is that the dev is planning on having the plugin move the current Citation Key field, but hasn't successful to date.

(For copy & paste, though, note that it's easy to configure keyboard shortcuts)

Zorozero · 2026-03-10T19:42:50+00:00

Same. Want it "at the top" again plus, it's flawed in lastest 8.0.4: It creates an artificial key, although the settings stipulate that it should be "auth.lower + shorttitle(3,3) + year"

Does it need to be restarted to get a new key? That would be painful.

emilianoeheyns · 2026-03-11T01:29:53+00:00

Problems with BBT please report on github. I don't know what "artificial key" means though. Restarts not required to get new keys.

Zorozero · 2026-03-11T09:14:51+00:00

Sure, BBT is out of scope. The key was something like zotero-xxx-yyyy or similar. I entered a new item, expecting some key like author+title+year (…) as defined in settings. It was overwritten, was my first impression.

adamsmith · 2026-03-11T09:44:15+00:00

Anything that happens automatically with the key is BBT. You really do need to report it on GitHub

emilianoeheyns · 2026-03-11T11:57:34+00:00

And zotero-item-<some number> is BBTs way of saying that the formula found nothing to make a key from. That is likely why you are seeing it.

Zorozero · 2026-03-14T18:27:47+00:00

Thanks!

Meanwhile, BBT 9.0.7 does the job: I dragged along another *.bib bug, ... "I was expecting a `,' or a `}'---line NNN of file ./xxx.bib" ..., just ugly, but I am not sure what caused it. I chased and removed like 20 entries and the problem disappeared at some point.

BBT does generate the keys again. BBT export works as expected. And no: The citation key remains in the middle of the fields -- I am Ok with that. How about you Wei?

emilianoeheyns · 2026-03-14T21:51:44+00:00

Citekey field is now at the top. I do not understand what "I dragged along" etc describes.

Zorozero · 2026-03-14T22:26:52+00:00

There was another bug in my database. It must have slipped in when I updated from version 7 to 8. It was resolved by deleting several items and narrowing it down to one specific item. It was actually about the URL field, which contained the URI. However, it produced the erroneous output, "I was expecting..." This error message appeared for any items added later. I have no idea what caused this or how it was resolved, but I removed the URI from the field and added it again later. Then it worked.