The Performance of Bibtex4word and Your Personal Views

The Performance of Bibtex4word and Your Personal Views

The Bibtex4Word software is designed only to run on Microsoft Windows either 32-bit or 64-bit and will not work on Mac OS X. It also requires Microsoft Office Word 2002 or higher. Also, Bibtex4Word is not a 1-piece software like other applications you install on your computer. It requires 2 other software to make it work.

You need to install JabRef and MikTeX. To install Bibtex4Word, first, download the latest version of MikTeX from Basic MikTeX 2.9.5105. Once installed, make sure it is installed correctly. To test it, open the command prompt then enter the command without quotes “bibtex” then hit Enter. If MikTeX is installed correctly, you should get the message “Need exactly one file argument”.

If instead you received a message saying “bibtex is not recognized as an internal or external command” then MikTeX is not installed properly. In this case, you should re-install MikTeX. Once MikTeX is installed, you should install next JabRef. To download, visit JabRef Reference Manager. Once installed, you should make hidden folders visible in the Windows Explorer.

To do this, start Windows Explorer then click Tools then select Folder Options. In Folder Options window, scroll down a little bit then under “Hidden files and folders” section, select “Show hidden files and folders” and then click OK. See image.

Next, download Bibtex4Word Template File. Once downloaded, create a new folder anywhere in your hard drive then unpack the contents of the Bibtex4Word ZIP file into that folder. Once unpacked, go to the folder then copy the file “Bibtex4Word.dot” into the Microsoft Office Word Startup folder. For Microsoft Windows XP, copy the file to “C:Documents and SettingsApplication DataMicrosoftWordSTARTUP”.

For Microsoft Windows Vista, copy the file to “C:UsersAppDataRoamingMicrosoftWordSTARTUP”. For Microsoft Windows 7, copy the file to “C:UsersAppDataRoamingMicrosoftWordSTARTUP”. If different users will be using Bibtex4Word, you need to copy the file to all the user accounts that will use the program. For Windows 7 users, right-click Bibtex4Word.dot then select Properties. In General tab, click Unblock in case it is not grayed out yet then click OK.

And you’re done. You can now use Bibtex4Word in Microsoft Office Word. You should see the Bibtex4Word toolbar in the Add-Ins tab. To make sure Bibtex4Word is working properly, open Test4w.doc in the folder where you extracted the ZIP file.