Citations in Word

Zotero also provides a plugin for Microsoft Word that allows you to insert citations and bibliographies directly into your documents. The technical details of this depart from the procedure for inserting citations into a Quarto document, but still follows the same steps of 1) inserting a citation and 2) generating a bibliography.

Inserting Citations

The Zotero plugin for Word should have been automatically downloaded and installed when you installed Zotero. You can confirm this by checking for a Zotero tab in the toolbar of a new Word document. If the tab is not visible, you may need to restart Word or reinstall Zotero.

In a new Word document, the Zotero tab should be available if you have already downloaded Zotero–it automatically installs the Word plugin.

Under the Zotero tab, press the “Add/Edit Citation” button.

If this is the first citation you’re inserting into the document, you will be prompted to choose the citation style you’d like to use. This can be changed later if needed.

You can now search through your Zotero library for the content you need to cite. This searchbar pop-up will search through your whole library, but you can opt to look through a specific folder by pressing the Z drop-down button on the left.

The results of your search will appear in a drop-down menu below. You can search for and select multiple documents before inserting them. When you are done adding citations, press Enter.

Your in-line citation should now be visible in your document. The next section will discuss how to include the bibliography.

Adding a Bibliography

Note that adding citations and adding the bibliography are two separate steps. The bibliography can be added at any time after the first citation has been placed in the document. Simply press the “Add/Edit Bibliography” button. You may occassionally need to press the “Refresh” button to update the bibliography.

Initial Add & New Citations

The bibliography can be added at any time after the first citation has been placed in the document. Simply press the “Add/Edit Bibliography” button.

After pressing the button, the bibliography should appear where you had your cursor placed.

To add new citations, simply repeat the procedure outlined previously. Some versions of Word and Zotero will automatically update the bibliography, but older versions may require you to press the Refresh button!

Change Style

If, after inserting your first citation, you decide to use a different citation style, you can do so by pressing the “Document Preferences” button under the Zotero tab. This will allow you to change the citation style of the document. Note that this will change the style of all in-line citations and the bibliography.

Press the Document Preferences button to make changes to the citation style of the document.

Select the new style you’d like to use. If needed, you can first download the style from the Zotero website, install it into Zotero, and then restart both Word and Zotero.

Note that the style of the in-line citations and the bibliography have now been updated to reflect the new CSL file we’ve chosen.
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