I’ve been using the Paperpile for Word with Chicago style citations. I now need to convert the cites to bibtex and copy the text into overleaf. however, when I change the citation style from chicago to bibtex, where i have mulitple references for example (Smith 2022, Aronson 2023), it makes it one big bibtex like smith_2022_aronson_2023_. Also, it doesnt wrap the cites in the command \cite{}. Please help, any advice would be appreciated!!
Welcome to the forum, @Emily_Doherty! To convert citations made with the Paperpile for Word to LaTeX and BibTeX format for Overleaf, you’ll need to follow quite a few steps:
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Export references to BibTeX format from the Word plugin:
- Open your Word document. In the Paperpile menu in Word, go to Settings and Tools > Document Settings and click the Export button. Choose the BibTeX format option. It will save the references to a file with a
.bibextension. - Alternatively, if you already have all of the references in a folder in your library, you can export the folder to BibTeX format. In the sidebar, find the folder, click the 3 dots menu, and select Export in the dropdown menu.
- Open your Word document. In the Paperpile menu in Word, go to Settings and Tools > Document Settings and click the Export button. Choose the BibTeX format option. It will save the references to a file with a
-
Upload the
.bibfile to Overleaf:- In Overleaf, upload your
.bibfile by going to the files section of your project and clicking Upload. This file will hold all your references. - For example, the format for the BibTeX entry of a journal article may look something like this:
@article{AuthorYear-xy,
author = {Author Name},
title = {Title of the paper},
journal = {Journal Name},
year = {Year},
volume = {Volume},
pages = {Pages}
}
The
AuthorYear-xyof the BibTeX entry is the citation key, and you will put each of these placeholders into your LaTeX document in place of the Word citations, see the next step. - In Overleaf, upload your
-
Replace Word citations with LaTeX citations:
- The next step is the tricky bit. Copy and paste your Word document into Overleaf (but don’t include the reference list at the end; Overleaf will make that for you when you compile the document). Bear in mind you will need to change things into formatting compatible with LaTeX, e.g., Introduction becomes \section{Introduction} etc., see Overleaf LaTeX help for more information on LaTeX formatting. Find where you’ve inserted the citations and replace them with the LaTeX
\cite{}command, referencing the corresponding BibTeX entry, e.g., as\cite{AuthorYear-xy}. - Alternatively, you can copy each LaTeX citation directly from Paperpile by selecting the reference in your library, clicking the Copy citation button in the toolbar, clicking Copy LaTeX citation and paste into the Overleaf document.
- The next step is the tricky bit. Copy and paste your Word document into Overleaf (but don’t include the reference list at the end; Overleaf will make that for you when you compile the document). Bear in mind you will need to change things into formatting compatible with LaTeX, e.g., Introduction becomes \section{Introduction} etc., see Overleaf LaTeX help for more information on LaTeX formatting. Find where you’ve inserted the citations and replace them with the LaTeX
-
Use BibTeX in your LaTeX document:
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In your Overleaf document, include the bibliography by adding the following lines near the end of your document, making sure to replace
your_bib_filewith the actual name of your.bibfile (without the.bibextension).\bibliographystyle{plain} \bibliography{your_bib_file}
-
-
Compile the document:
- When you compile your document in Overleaf, LaTeX will automatically pull the citations from your
.bibfile and format them according to the chosen style.
- When you compile your document in Overleaf, LaTeX will automatically pull the citations from your
Let me know if you have further questions.