Zotero help

This page is for me and anyone else who uses Zotero to manage their references and has some trouble with it. You're welcome

Using Zotero in Word

References can be added to a Word document even when the file is not held on that computer (i.e. you can insert a reference in a Word document on your own laptop while the file is held on the university computer).

 

Citations

1. To add a citation, click Add/Edit Citation on the Zotero tab in Word 
2. (The first time this is done in a document, choose which style of referencing you want to use. The Harvard style I like isn’t available. Click ‘Manage styles’ and type Harvard and choose an appropriate one. I like “Coventry University – Harvard” which cites in standard Harvard style.)
3. A long red box appears.
4. Then either:

Start typing the author or title into the box Click on the chosen article To add a page reference, add a colon and the page number into the box, and it converts it Press Enter

OR

Click the red Z Click Classic view Locate article and click it Type page numbers into the page numbers box Click OK

Multiple sources can be combined into one reference to look like (Smith, 1997, 2011, Jones, 2019) by typing multiple names into the long red box.

When writing a citation like Smith (1989) where you don’t want the author’s name to appear in the brackets, write Smith as part of the normal text, and generate the citation to the year by doing the above, then:

1. Click on the blue bubble containing the author’s name within the long red box
2. Click Suppress author
3. Press Enter

 

Bibliography

To generate a bibliography:

• Put the cursor in a suitable place in the document (i.e. the end, under the title “Bibliography”).
• Press the Add/Edit Bibliography button on the Zotero tab in Word and the bibliography will magically appear.

 

When a citation is added to the text, Zotero automatically adds it to the bibliography. However if a citation has been used in the text, and is then deleted, it doesn’t always automatically delete it from the bibliography. Click Refresh on the Zotero tab in Word to update the bibliography and remove deleted texts.

 

Working with files in Zotero

Syncing

On an alternative computer (e.g. at uni) it will be necessary to download the Zotero app and the Word plugin.

To sync, in the Zotero app, go to:

• File
• Preferences
• Syncing
• Then log in with username and password
• Wait a bit…
• If nothing happens, try clicking the curly green arrow on the far right of the Zotero app 

Syncing will merge files from two or more locations, e.g. my laptop and university PC. Double-clicking on a file will bring up that PDF even if it is not stored on the computer which is currently being used.

Adding files from my computer to Zotero

• Open Zotero
• Separately, open the folder which contains the PDFs (i.e. My Computer > Documents)
• Drag and drop the file(s) into Zotero

á  Pay attention to whether the metadata is properly added; if it’s not added, see below.

á  It might be an idea to only add articles to Zotero once they’ve been read and annotated fully. 

 

Adding book chapters

• Open Zotero
• Get into desired folder under My Library
• Click the drop-down arrow next to the green + sign, and then click Book section
• In the Title box, add the chapter title
• In the Book title box, add the title of the whole book
• In the Author section, add the author of the chapter
• To add the author(s) of the book, click the + sign to the right of Author (I find this often needs clicking twice)
• Click the drop-down arrow next to Author and then choose Book author or Editor as appropriate
• Add the name of book author / editor
• Add year, publisher etc.
• In the Pages box, remember to type in the pages of the chapter (not how many pages there are in the book, nor how many pages there are in the chapter, nor the pages I’m specifically quoting from. Add the pages of whole chapter, for example, if the chapter is from page 34 to 56 then put 34-56 in the Pages box.) 

Adding summaries

To add my own summaries and notes into Zotero…

For brief notes and summaries or anything else*:

Either:

• Click on the file
• In the right-hand panel, scroll down and click in the box to right of Extra
• Type in box

or:

• Click the > next to the file
• Click the PDF sign
• Write in the box on right

or:

• Click on the file
• In the right-hand panel, click the Notes tab
• Write in the box

(If the text editor is greyed off and not letting you write in, try closing down the program and restarting it! )

* For example, there are some authors whose names I struggle to spell, but adding a few incorrect spellings of the name into the Extra box means that when I want to add a citation, I can incorrectly type the author's name, and it will bring up the right author, who can then be cited (and the name appears correctly in the citation; no one will ever know! This is also useful when authors have letters which are not in the Latin alphabet, such as àßçéł. Also useful for key words you might associate with an article but don't appear in its title. . 

Editing and updating files

Suppose you added a PDF, and later want to change it e.g. to add more notes…

• In Zotero, double-click the file to open it.
• Make changes
• Save and close

This saves all the changes to the Zotero file, but not to the source file if you have it saved elsewhere on the computer, eg in Documents. To avoid problems, always use Zotero to open files. If opened via Documents and edited by accident (to the extent that you don't want to restart editing), see below to solve this problem.

 

Suppose you added a PDF, and later edited the source file (i.e. you edited the file stored in Documents). Zotero does not reflect these changes. Suppose you now want Zotero to reflect these changes….

• Drag and drop the source file into Zotero
• Highlight the two files at their highest level i.e: > if it exists)
• Right click and select Merge items
• In the right-hand panel, select whichever version you want to keep (probably the later version, but check this)
• Click Merge 2 items button

This only merges the parent directory (or whatever it’s called) the PDFs will all be listed under the >. You may wish to delete the unwanted / old PDFs. To avoid having to do this, always open documents through Zotero.

 

Adding metadata

If an article has been uploaded onto Zotero, but Zotero doesn’t recognise it and you need to add the metadata manually…

1. Right click on the article in question
2. Click Retrieve metadata
3. Wait a few seconds

This often doesn't work, but worth a try because if it does work it saves you a minute or two. If it doesn't work, try this:

1. Right click on the article in question
2. Click Create parent item
3. Add metadata manually (you might need to open the file itself to find this out) 

Deleting files from Zotero

In the Zotero app, clicking on a file (article/book) and pressing the Delete button on the keyboard will remove it from the collection, but not from Zotero itself – it will move to ‘Unfiled items’.

To properly delete a file, right click and select Move item to trash. This moves the file to Trash but doesn’t delete from Zotero itself. To remove it from the Trash and permanently get rid of it, go into the Trash folder, right click the file, select Delete item and then click OK.

 

Removing from trash

You may accidentally move something to the Trash and want to restore it to your main folders. In the Trash folder, right click and choose Restore item to return it to where it was held previously. Phew!

 

Additional help

This guide is written by me for the little troubles I've sometimes had. If you have other problems* you could try: https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_usage.

* The other problems must be related to Zotero, If your problem is something more serious, like you are currently drowning or you are being mauled by a grizzly bear, then I'm afraid the above link will not be of much use.