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Hello (or Tere, since your Mendeley profile says that you are a guest researcher in Estonia ),

Thanks for the review of Mendeley.

May I ask a couple of things?
> – Mendeley doesn’t add a “accessed on” field to bibliographical items retrieved from the web (Zotero adds it automatically on retrieval, and includes them in bibliography).

This should be added, up to the style that you are using. Which style are you using? I’ll double check that we don’t have any problem with some specific style.

> – inability to add page numbers to citations there;

We will address it on the future, I’ll have in mind.

> – worse integration with Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, which I use;

Any other suggestion/idea or some feature missing?

Cheers,

Hola Carles,

Yes, it is “Tere”, and it seems we have 2 cities in common – Tallinn and Barcelona (where my supervisor is based).

First of all, thanks for the paying attention to the feedback regarding Mendeley. I think that’s a great attitude in order to make your product even better.

I’m using Harvard Reference format 1. In any case, it seems to me that the “accessed” field is absent from the details pane on the right.
Compare Mendeley:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nunocorreia/4584220089/
with Zotero:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nunocorreia/4584847512/
(in Zotero, you see “accessed” below the URL).
Or maybe I’m missing something…

Indeed, page numbers are quite essential for my thesis…

Regarding Word 2008 for Mac, besides the page numbers functionality of Zotero, I also like their keyboard shortcuts (even more welcome due to the awkward AppleScript menus in Word, implemented because of absence of VisualBasic I believe).

As for suggestions, I would also recommend some tools / browser extensions to more easily retrieve references from the web. In other words, extend your PDF meta-data parsing to the WWW references.

Keep up the good work!

Moi Nuno :-) (I only know two words in Finnish, plus the numbers that are similar to Estonian)

Ahh… now I understood what you meant on the post about the accessed field. I thought that you was talking about the “Accessed” field in the bibliography generated by Mendeley in the Mac Word.

You can enable the “Date Accessed” if you go to Mendeley Preferences, you choose Conference Proceedings in “Document type” and then you enable “Date Accessed”. I’ve checked it now and the web importer is not filling the Data Accessed, I’ll open an internal ticket for it.

The Mac Word Plugin and shortcuts: we plan to add it on some future version, so soon or later you will have :-)

Have you installed in your browser the Web Importer?
http://www.mendeley.com/import/

It should help to add references found in the web to your Mendeley Library. Take a look into that…

Gracias for the useful info and feedback Carles! I’ll be following the new developments.

Thanks Carles and Nuno. This was very useful!

[...] doktorant Nuno kirjutas sel teemal kommentaari kursuse ajaveebi ning tegi ka sissekande oma ajaveebi. Seepeale avastas selle teema üks Mendeley arendajatest ning nad jätkasid arutelu Nuno ajaveebi [...]

HI Nuno, long time no see.
I was lookink for information about Zotero and Mendeley and came across your post. Still deciding which one is better.
Hope everything’s alright in Finland

JPaz
IPiaget

Olá João!
Nice to be back in touch!
Maybe best solution is to test both, with the word processor of your choice.
All is well in the Baltic! Hope with you too.
Abraço!
Nuno

I love how the internet changes the way that we research.

Nuno, I just installed MS Office 2011 and it made the problems even worse. I tried to re-install it, but Mendeley is to smart to install the applescript with an version of Word they do not support. So I’ve been searching for solutions, luckily I found yours. I’m going to try the sync to Zotero and see if that will work. It save so much time when this function works well!

Much love to you to Carles, the Mendeley team is the best I’ve seen and I love the product. What I love more is your responsive support service, open development and rapid development! Keep up the awesome work!!!

Rob Fraser RN
Graduate Student and Nurse.

Rob, glad you found the post useful. Good luck with your research! Nuno

hi nuno,

do you still have the same problems and use zotero and mendeley in combination? I am encountering the same issues and wonder if I then should change to zotero completely? why do you prefer to use both?

thanks so much
ulrike

Hi Ulrike,

Yes, I still have the same problem. Possibly it will be solved when I upgrade Word, but I am waiting to finish writing my doctoral thesis before I upgrade it. I don’t want to risk breaking something that is working now. After I finish my thesis I will upgrade Word, evaluate again, and pick one of them – Mendeley or Zotero. For now, I’m keeping my data in both services for future-proofing.

Hope this was useful. All the best,

Nuno

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