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Zotero: Zotero in Word

A short introduction to Zotero reference management software

Important note

You must keep your Zotero Library app open at all times when you are using Word to be able to add citations from your Zotero Library.

Zotero in Word

Before adding citations make sure you have set your referencing style, go to the Zotero tab and choose 'Document Preferences' and then choose a style. (See the getting started page for adding Harvard Bath style).

To add a citation to your Word document, go to the Zotero tab and select ‘Add/Edit Citation’.

Add citation on Zotero word tab

Then start typing in the source title or author

As described

If you want to cite multiple sources at once, enter details for one citation then click in the bar and start entering details for another and so on.

As described

Then press enter on your keyboard and the references will be added into your text. 

There are two ways to add page numbers or omit authors. You may want to omit an author where the author’s name comes up naturally in the text and you just want the year of publication. Or you may want to add page numbers where you have cited or paraphrased a section of work.

  1. As you add citations, click on the blue author’s name and then you will see options come up to add page numbers or tick 'omit author'. You can also change ‘page’ to ‘paragraph’ or ‘location’ for example if you were reading an e-book, among many other options.

As described

This way is particularly useful if you are citing multiple sources at once.

2. The other way is to click on the arrow next to the Z on the citation bar and choose ‘classic view’.

Classic view

Now you can choose page numbers or to omit details from the reference.

Full classic view

 

If you wish to edit a citation click on it and choosing ‘update field’ will sync the citation to the latest updates, so for example if you realised the author was wrong, this would update the author’s details to what you had in the Zotero Library.

N.B. Update citations in your Zotero Library, not on Word, if you want it to sync across all citations and documents.

Update citation field

 

In the Zotero toolbar on Word, pressing ‘Add/Edit Bibliography’ will add the Bibliography wherever you have your cursor.

Add bibliography

Similar to updating citations, if you right click on your bibliography you can press update field to sync your bibliography to your Zotero Library to add any updates to your references. Your bibliography will automatically grow as you add citations to your text.