Using Zotero Citation Manager

Zotero “watches” the pages you view to see if any of them contain citations to books, articles or other sources. When it identifies a source on the page, the Zotero Connector will display a type-specific icon near the address bar in the browser. 

Just click the icon and Zotero will automatically save the citation (and the full text of the source, if available) into your Zotero library. Notice that you have to have the Zotero software open on your computer for the import to work!

The Zotero icon in your browser will display in different places in different browsers:

Note: Like any citation manager/generator, in order for Zotero to produce accurate citations and bibliographies, it is extremely important that you ensure that each item is given complete and accurate metadata in the Zotero library, including classifying each as the correct item type. Often this will require manual edits. If Zotero contains incomplete or inaccurate information, your citations will be inaccurate.

After installing Zotero, you'll notice that there is now a "Zotero" button in Microsoft Word on your computer, as well as in Google Docs (only in web browsers to which you have added the Zotero plugin). 

These buttons allow you to automatically add your sources to your paper.

After you write a sentence that needs a citation, simply click "add/edit citation"  to add in-text citation (depending on what citation style you use, this may mean a parenthetical citation, footnote, endnote, etc). 

After you are done with your paper,  simply click "add/edit bibliography"  to add your bibliography at the end of your paper. When you revise your paper, adding or removing more in-text citations, simply click "refresh" to update your bibliography.

• More Google Docs help  (adding page numbers, syncing, etc).
• More Microsoft Word help  (adding page numbers, excluding author names, etc)

Need another citation style?

If you need a citation style not automatically included in Zotero, simply:

1. go to the Zotero Style Repository. 
2. search for the style you need (for example, MLA 8)
3. with Zotero open on your computer, click on the name of the style you want to install.

The style will be downloaded and installed automatically. More help.

Zotero tab not appearing in Word?

Is your Zotero tab not appearing in Word? Try the tips suggested on this websites:

• Help from the Dudley Knox Library, Naval Postgraduate School
• Help from Zotero.org

The free version of Zotero comes with 300MB of storage space. If you hit the limit and do not wish to pay for a storage upgrade, here are some suggestions for clearing space:

• Check which folders are taking up the most space to manually clear unneeded files: https://www.zotero.org/settings/storage
• If you’re primarily using Zotero as a citation manager, and don’t need to save PDFs or website screenshots (just the metadata about them and links to them):
  • Turn off automatically saving PDFs for every article. This is under Edit > Preferences > General > File Handling in the desktop version of Zotero. It will still save all other metadata, but won’t take up storage space with attached PDFs.
  • Turn off automatically saving website screenshots (also under File Handling). Note: If you anticipate a website might go down or change, you may wish to keep this turned on. 
• If you want to keep PDFs and screenshots:
  • Turn off file syncing. Under your preferences in the Sync tab, you can uncheck file syncing so any PDFs or screenshots will only be stored on your computer’s hard drive rather than in Zotero’s cloud storage. If you would like to sync to your OneDrive, The Ohio State University's Libraries has shared instructions to do so.
• Other quick fixes:
  • Clear duplicate items. There is a folder within your Zotero library for duplicates, so if you have any, you can delete those to clear space.
  • The trash folder in your library also does not automatically empty, so you can delete items you’ve moved to trash by clicking on the items and selecting ‘Delete Permanently.’