Advanced Reference Search

Find a reference by its author, title, journal or year, and insert it into a citation.

The reference search looks through all the .bib files in your project, so you can find a reference without remembering its citation key. Nothing needs to be set up.

Your project needs at least one .bib file. You can upload one, or import your library from Zotero or Mendeley.

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Insert a citation

1. Start a citation

   In a .tex file, type \cite{. The editor adds the closing brace. Below the cursor you see the citation keys and a blue box, Open advanced reference search.

   

   The blue box under a citation

   The Insert citation button in the toolbar and Insert, then Citation, also start a \cite{} for you. The box appears for other citation commands too, such as \citep, \autocite, \parencite and \textcite.

2. Open the search

   Click Search in the blue box, or press Ctrl+Space between the braces. The dialog lists every entry, with its title, citation key, author, journal and year.

   

   All the entries of the project

3. Find the entry

   Type in the search box. It looks in the citation key, author, title, journal and year, and highlights what it found. Every word must match, so turing 1936 finds Turing’s paper from 1936. Other fields, such as the publisher, are not searched.

   

   Searching by author and year

4. Choose one or more entries

   Click an entry. It turns green and its key appears above the list. To add another, click it, or search again: what you chose stays. To remove one, click it again or click the × next to its key.

   

   Two chosen entries

5. Click Insert

   The keys appear between the braces, separated by commas. If your document has no bibliography yet, add these lines before \end{document}, using the names of your .bib files without the extension:

   \bibliographystyle{plain}
   \bibliography{refs,more}
   

   Click Recompile. The references appear in the PDF.

   

   The compiled citation

The search works the same way in the Visual editor.

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Change a citation

Add a reference: put the cursor between the braces of an existing citation and open the search. Insert adds the new keys after the ones already there.

Replace references: select the keys in the editor, then press Ctrl+Space. The keys appear above the list and the button now says Replace. Remove the ones you do not want, add others, then click Replace. A key that is not in any .bib file stays until you remove it.

Replacing selected keys

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Use the keyboard

Key	What it does
Down arrow	Moves from the search box into the list, then down the list
Up arrow	Moves up the list
Space	Chooses the entry, or removes it from what you chose
Enter	Inserts what you chose, when you are in the list
Tab	Moves between the search box, the list and the buttons
Esc	Closes the dialog and changes nothing

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Where the entries come from

The search covers every .bib file in the project, including files imported from Zotero or Mendeley. When you edit a .bib file, the next search finds the new entries.

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If something goes wrong

What you see	Why	What to do
The list in the dialog is empty	The project has no .bib file	Upload one or create one
No blue box, and Ctrl+Space lists LaTeX commands	The cursor is not between the braces of a citation	Click between the braces
Ctrl+Space does nothing	Your computer uses this shortcut for something else	Click Search in the blue box
An entry is not found	The search only covers the key, author, title, journal and year	Search by one of those