Reference Extractor is an online tool to extract Zotero and Mendeley references from Microsoft Word and LibreOffice documents. Scroll down for detailed instructions.

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About Reference Extractor

Features

Reference Extractor is free online tool for extracting references from Word (.docx) and LibreOffice (.odt) documents that have been inserted with the Zotero or Mendeley word processor plugins.

This can be handy if you lost access to your Zotero or Mendeley library but still have your documents. In this case, you can use Reference Extractor to recover the items cited in your documents, and import them back into your reference manager. Or maybe you received a document from somebody else, and you would like to import the cited items into your own reference manager library.

If you have document with items from your own Zotero library, you can also use Reference Extractor to select these items in your Zotero library. You can then e.g. add these items to a collection or apply a tag to them.

Limitations

Note that Reference Manager:

• can only extract references from documents in the .docx and .odt formats
• can only extract references that were inserted with the reference managers Zotero and Mendeley
• cannot extract plain-text references

If you aren't sure what reference manager was used to insert references, or if the references are plain-text or not, you can just give Reference Manager a try and see if it finds any references. Alternatively, you can verify that the references in the document consist of active field codes. Whereas plain-text citations look and behave like regular text, active field codes have grey shading by default, and can be toggled by pressing Alt+F9 (PC) or Option+F9 (Mac) in a Word document. When toggled, Zotero and Mendeley active field codes (and any other field codes) will expand and show their embedded metadata. Toggled Zotero fields start with "ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION", and toggled Mendeley fields start with "ADDIN CSL_CITATION".

Also note that, if you import your extracted references into Zotero or Mendeley, that these programs won't recognize that these newly imported items match the items in your document. To establish these links, manually replace each citation in your document with the matching imported item.

If you aren't sure Reference Extractor is a good fit, make sure to review Zotero's listing of alternative tools.

What about my privacy?

Reference Extractor is private and secure. The extraction is performed locally in your web browser and can be run offline. Your documents never leave your computer.

Is it really free?

Yes! Reference Extractor is a labor of love. However, if the tool saved you time, please consider supporting me with a small donation and/or by starring (upvoting) the Reference Extractor GitHub repository.

Using Reference Extractor

Extracting a document

Start by clicking the "Choose File" button at the top of this page and select your Word or LibreOffice document. Reference Extractor will then automatically extract all Zotero and Mendeley references it can find. Items that have been cited multiple times are deduplicated, and Reference Extractor keeps track of how many times each item was cited.

Reference Extractor will show the number of references it was able to extract (after deduplication) and the number of duplicates removed. It will also show which Citation Style Language citation style was selected in the document.

Selecting items in Zotero

If the items you extracted originated from your own Zotero library, you can use the "Select in Zotero" button to select these items in your Zotero library.

Selecting an output format

You now have the option to choose between the following output formats:

• CSL JSON
• CSL JSON (with cite counts)
• BibTeX
• RIS
• APA references
• APA references (with cite counts, tab-separated)

If you would like to import the extracted references into a reference manager, the CSL JSON format is recommended if your reference manager supports this format. Otherwise select the widely supported BibTeX or RIS format. You can also generate formatted references in APA format.

Two formats include cite counts (the number of times each reference was cited in the document): "CSL JSON (with cite counts)", where the cite count is stored in the "note" field ("Extra" in Zotero), and "APA references (with cite counts, tab-separated)", a two-column tab-separated-value format with the formatted reference in one column, and the cite count in the other.

After you have selected your desired output format, download or copy the extracted references to your clipboard using the respective buttons.