Answered By: Keely Wilczek
Last Updated: Mar 14, 2024     Views: 218

If you have saved a PDF to your Zotero library and not populated a parent item for the PDF, Zotero will use its filename to create a citation for the source.

For instance, Zotero would cite this source as “1-s2.0-S0040162515002024-Main.pdf” because there is no parent item with information about this PDF in Zotero:

 

 

To solve this problem, create a parent item for the PDF. You can do this in one of two ways.

  1. First, try to have Zotero populate a parent item for the PDF by right-clicking on the file and selecting Retrieve Metadata for PDF.  
  2. If that doesn't work, right click on the PDF and select Create Parent Item.

 

 

Now this PDF has a parent item and can be correctly cited in Word: