Does OneNote have any 'field' functionality? I haven't seen OneNote 2007, but the earlier version didn't have any way to insert fields, nor did it have footnote support, which would make the process used by Zotero's current Word plugin unusable in a OneNote plugin.

Not to say it couldn't be done, but you'd have to have a two part process: a OneNote extension which can insert some machine-readable reference {{Smith, 2006, id#0129399375::212}} in the text and then another Word plugin which could convert that to proper Zotero reference.

Or you can just use Zotero's quick copy command (CTRL-ALT-C, with item selected, and your citation format chosen in the prefs) and paste the result into OneNote. It doesn't leave you with a Zotero auto-cite field, but it at least lets you leave a citation trail for yourself. (I don't mind this, since I use quick copy anyway).

But if you're working with footnoted styles, OneNote has that limitation built in, I'm afraid.

Hmm. The above gives me an idea. What about a zotero style that outputs a machine-readable citation string (like the above example), as well as the above-described Word/OOo plugin. This (combined with a few other macro tricks) would let you cite while composing your text in any text editor (OneNote, vim, or whatever). Then you could presumably transfer the whole thing to Word, convert it with the Macro, and it would be ready to process further with Word.

I completely agree. Not having a zotero integration is killing me. The whole purpose of onenote is to TAKE NOTES.

I know this is really onenotes problem in that they do not have an adequate citation manager in the application that is marketed as the brainstorming, notetaking process behind all papers and other (citation heavy) publications.

I dont think zotero can match one note in the concept of taking notes. the integration with other office documents is fantastic and there is no need to reinvent the wheel. But the ability to integrate onenote with zotero would be in zotero's best interest. There are several reasons.

1.The high marketing of onenote to students, which includes
a. Onenotes inclusion in the microsoft office student and home edition,
b. This standard suite is the most popular and cheapest microsoft office suite
c. This standard suite's trial is included in most distributed new computers
i. especially those computers/laptops are marketed to students
2. OneNote's biggest negative features are zotero's biggest positive features
a. OneNote has no citation feature. While OneNote has the great ability to gather your notes from everywhere and then automatically make a word document once you have compiled those notes, there is no way to include citations before the document is sent to word. It would be far easier to include the citation before the onenote document is sent to word.
b. OneNote has a limited tagging feature. It is difficult to find your notes on a particular topic by tag. The brainstorming process in OneNote would be much enhanced by Zotero.

You add these things together, and a zotero integration would spread very quickly amongst students, the target audiences for both applications. Where zotero fails in notetaking, OneNote excels. Where OneNote fails in citation, Zotero excels. I am frankly surprised there is no integration already.

I strongly agree that a way to insert citations as a plain text ref (e.g., {{ foo, 2006 #id}} would be totally killer. EndNote can do this, so I can use endnote with oneNote (although I refuse to).

It will also be killer for quick collaboration using google docs.

Please make this happen :)

http://blogs.msdn.com/descapa/archive/2006/09/09/747086.aspx

Above link has information on how OneNote interact with Outlook tasks... so it's technically doable. Another way to do it may be inserting it as a hyperlink i.e. zotero://attachment/147/

bdarcus:

it's really not realistic to expect the Zotero team to be supporting every possible note-taking (or, say, outlining) application out there.

I agree with this. There are far too many notetaking programs out there to expect the Zotero developers to cater to all of them. I think OneNote is in a unique position to deserve a plugin, though. It's a very popular notetaker, and it is now included with every MS office suite version.

I think separate Zotero->OneNote and OneNote->Word plugins would be wonderful.

nope - I'm not sure if that has become clear from this thread, but there is no intention (I know of) from Zotero core devs to write a oneNote plugin. There are just no resources for that type of thing, as nice as it would be.

There are various plugins for other programs (e.g. for Lyx and Wordpress - though they do quite different things) coded by third parties and that would be the way to go for onenote as well. Zotero devs are always happy to advise people on the technical details on the Zotero dev list.
That's really pretty much all that can be said here.

@adamsmith

I don't think Zotero's intention to not support such a feature is clear from the thread except that it has mostly been ignored.

This would be truly great. But a plain text version of zotero citation as urlwolf suggested would be the perfect solution for this or any other note-taking software and would not have to be software specific.

Thanks for the quick response. I did some searching after my last post and found the second option you linked there about Plain-text support. I wasn't quite able to figure out how it was supposed to work based on the instructions.

Could you tell me if I'm right about RTF scan:

RTF scan sounds like an option, but as far as I understand, it's a one-time solution. You compose in any program and insert the plain-text citations. Then you run rtf-scan (in zotero, from a saved rtf version) and generate citations and bibliography. But you can't continuosly update this or convert to the fields format that word uses, right?

As far as the plain-text support option goes, would it do what I want it to:

I want to be able to compose in onenote or any other program, enter plain-text citations, and then drop the text into WORD with the zotero plugin and have it recognize the citations and add them automatically to my bibliography. Just impossible, right? I guess what I'm asking is, what exactly does this second option do (the zotero-plain plugin)?

The zotero-plain project (by Erik Hetzner) is an extension to the Python reStructuredText parser/publisher tool suite. It is composed of two elements: a Python module the extends the reStructuredText parsing and output engines of the suite; and a Firefox plugin that processes requests for citation data sent to Zotero by the text processor. All of the parsing is done on the Python side, and the communication bridge that speaks to Zotero is bound to Python, so the zotero-plain Firefox plugin would not be immediately useful for processing plain text cites from other environments. There is a base there to work from, though, for someone who wants to add strings to the community bow.

Evan,

For your use, it may be better to just work with links. The ZotSelect translator can copy direct links to items in Zotero. You can put this link into OneNote when you are taking notes relevant to a particular item. See the dicussion here: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/20040/

From the other direction, you can create a link to a OneNote note by right-clicking on the note in the organizer and selecting "Copy Link to Page". You can attach this to the Zotero item as a URI to be able to navigate quickly between Zotero and Onenote.