Zotero Tutorial

There are two ways to create a stand-alone bibliography in Zotero. If you want to create a bibliography of sources you're citing in your paper, view Writing a Paper instead.

Drag and Drop Method

1. Select your citation style using the steps below
2. In Zotero, minimize your citations so you aren't seeing the PDF, snapshots or notes in the citation pane
3. Select all the citations you wan to include in your bibliography, holding Ctrl to select individual citations, or Shift to select a list of citations
4. Drag and drop the citations into a word processing document, Excel spreadsheet, or PowerPoint
5. Your citations will be ordered alphabetically

Export Method

1. Put all the citations for your bibliography in a single folder (see Create a Folder in Zotero)
2. Right click on that folder and select Create Bibliography from Collection
3. Select your Citation Style
4. Click OK
5. Select the Location to save the RTF file (RTF is the non-proprietary version of Word) and click Save
6. Navigate to the saved location and open the RTF file to view your bibliography. You may copy and paste it into a document or use Save As to save it as a .docx

Select Your Citation Style

1. In Zotero, go to Edit à Preferences (PC) or Zotero à Settings or Preferences (Mac)
2. Select the Export tab
3. On the Item Format dropdown, select your citation format
4. If your format is not listed, follow the steps below

Adding Additional Citation Styles

1. In Zotero, go to Edit à Preferences (PC) or Zotero à Settings or Preferences (Mac)
2. Select the Cite tab
3. Click “Get additional styles…” link under Style Manager
4. Search for your citation style
5. Click the name of the Style you want to add
6. It will now be available in your list of Styles

Both APA and Chicago offer an annotated citation style in Zotero which will let you add your annotations into the Zotero info and automatically add it to your bibliography.

Add the Annotated Bibliography (APA or Chicago) Citation Style

1. Follow the Adding additional citation styles instructions above.
2. Search for annotated in step 4
3.  Add either the American Psychological Association 7th edition (annotated bibliography) and/or the Chicago Manual of Style 17th edition (note, annotated bibliography) to your style list

Add your Annotations to Zotero

1. In Zotero, click on the source you want to annotate, so you see the Info tab in the left panel
2. At the bottom of the Info panel, enter your annotation in the Extra field. Note that Zotero does not have a spell checker, so you may want to type your annotation elsewhere and copy and paste into the Extra field.
3. Zotero will pull your annotation from the Extra field when you use the annotated bibliography style (either APA or Chicago)

Create your Annotated Bibliography

1. Complete the above instructions to Add the Annotated Bibliography Citation Style and Add your Annotations to Zotero
2. Use either the Drag and Drop Method or the Export method above, selecting the annotated bibliography style you added above
3. Your bibliography will now include your annotations from the Extra field