Zotero Citation Manager

From a web browser, click the Zotero button at the bottom of your browser to open your Zotero library. At the top left is a folder button with a green plus sign. Select this to create a new "collection."

You can create collections to organize your references into different areas of interests, such as for different projects or classes. Collections are like file folders on your computer, but a reference can be in more than one collection at a time. In other words, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott could be in a collection about the Civil War, another about female authors, and a third collection about traditional gender roles without having three separate references. 

Follow along with this video to use Zotero in text citations and bibliographies in MS Word. Make sure you are not using Microsoft 365 when attempting, as the plug in does not work in the online app. 

Thank you to the McGill University Library  for creating this video. 

A few notes about the in text citations: 

• Both the in-text citations and the bibliography are surrounded grey highlights when you click on them. That's because it's not simple text, it's code inserted from Zotero. If you spot an error, it must be corrected in Zotero. Then refresh the Zotero program. If you correct the error in Word, the correction will be overwritten when your document syncs with Zotero again. 

• Once you click Unlink Citations to remove those grey formatting boxes, it cannot be undone. You should always save a separate copy first, so that you still have a copy with linked citations in case you need to edit it. You may want to unlink before submitting your paper, but if you then decide to edit it and add or remove references, Zotero does not recognized your existing references AS references. It assumes they are text, and if you insert a new reference Zotero treats it as the very first reference, and doesn't put it in the proper spot in your bibliography. 

Follow along with this video to use Zotero in text citations and bibliographies in Google Docs.  

Thank you to the University of Lynchburg for creating this video. 

To create a stand-alone bibliography for a document from your Zotero references:

1. Select the references or collections you want to include.
2. Hold the control key and click to select multiple items.
3. Right-click one of the selected items and select Create Bibliography.
4. A popup window will open, select the citation style you'd like to use.
5.  Select bibliography as the output mode and then copy to clipboard as the output method.
6. Paste the bibliography into your word document. 
7. Double check the formatting, the italics, and the overall citation to make sure it is formatted correctly.