This is a response to Carlos, who yesterday asked for help using BibDesk to
insert citations and a bibliography in Microsoft Word. First, I would ask
Carlos: Have you considered using Zotero as a reference manager? Zotero has
a Word plugin. You can import a BibDesk file into Zotero. Second, I don't
use Word directly (but sometimes I convert my plain-text documents to Word
format using Pandoc), so using BibDesk to insert citations and a
bibliography in Word is not a problem I have needed to solve, but I can see
that there would be a variety of methods to solve it.
1. The easiest method that I can imagine is to use Pandoc for the
bibliography: you would write citations manually in Word; then when finished
writing, you would generate the bibliography by feeding to Pandoc: a list of
citekeys + your BibDesk file + a CSL (Citation Style Language) file; then
you would copy the generated bibliography into your written document. This
would likely be easier (once you have learned to use Pandoc) than the
following alternative, because there are many ready-made CSL files available
on the Web for any bibliographic style. (Zotero also uses CSL files.)
2. Another method is to use BibDesk's templates: you would set up a
citations template for the citation style and a bibliography template for
the bibliography style; then set the default and alternate copying and
dragging formats in BibDesk's citation preference pane to those templates;
when citing you would select a publication in BibDesk, copy with the
citation template, and paste into Word; when finished writing you would
select all the cited publications in BibDesk, copy with the bibliography
template, and paste into Word. This way may be harder than the previously
mentioned method because you may have to write your own templates.
3. A third method would be not to write in Word at all: you would write in
plain text using Pandoc's Markdown syntax (which is very simple); cite
publications by writing @ in front of each citekey; when finished you would
generate the Word document by feeding to Pandoc: your plain-text file + your
BibDesk file + a CSL (Citation Style Language) file. This is actually what I
do (although Word is not often my destination format).
4. David Sanson posted to GitHub some BibDesk export templates for Pandoc
that allow a fourth method that is like a hybrid of the first and second
methods mentioned above:
https://github.com/dsanson/bibdesk-pandoc-export-templates
In summary, you can use Zotero, use BibDesk's templates, or use Pandoc in
various ways. Not to mention other possible methods.
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