Export to Word

You can download a document as a Word file (.docx) with the layout your course or journal asks for. Your headings, tables, images, captions and citations go with it.

Export the document

Open the document and press Document options, the three dots at the top right.
Choose Export document….
At the top of the dialog, next to Format, choose Word (.docx).
Pick a layout, and fill in the title page if you want one.
Press Download .docx.

Papero saves your latest changes first, so the file holds what you see. The dialog remembers your name, instructor and course in this browser, and each document's own layout and page setup, so the next export starts where you left off.

Choose a layout

Under Layout, pick one of four:

Default: a clean layout, ready to share.
Double-spaced manuscript: Times New Roman, double-spaced. The usual layout for journal submission, and the one APA and MLA papers use.
Two-column paper: the look of a conference or journal paper, with the title across the top. A very wide table gets a landscape page of its own.
Thesis or report: a title page, a contents page, each chapter on a new page and page numbers. A wider left margin leaves room for binding.

If your document uses APA 7 or MLA 9, the dialog opens on Double-spaced manuscript and the file follows that style: page numbers at the top right, the style's heading levels and a centred reference-list heading. The style comes from your document's citation style. To change it, use Citation style above the reference list. See Citation styles.

For an MLA paper without a title page, fill in Your name, Instructor and Course. Papero writes them and the date at the top of page 1, so do not type them in your document.

Add a title page

Tick Add a title page (title, author and date) and fill in Author on the title page. You can also add your Institution, Instructor, Course and a Date. Leave the date empty for today's date. The thesis layout always has a title page. The two-column layout has none: its title sits across the top of the columns.

More options

Press More options to see the rest. While it is closed, a line under it sums up what is switched on inside.

Number the pages adds page numbers.
Contents page lists your headings on a page of their own, after the title page. It is not offered for the two-column layout.
List of tables page and List of figures page appear when your document has numbered tables or figures, except in the two-column layout.
Under For submission, Leave out names, for blind review keeps your name, institution, course and instructor out of the file. Names you typed in the text stay, so check your acknowledgements and citations of your own work.
Tables and figures at the end puts each one on its own page after the references, as many journals ask. It appears when your document has tables or figures to move, except in the two-column layout.
Line numbers numbers the lines in the margin, so reviewers can point to them.

Under Page setup, press Change to pick the Paper, Font, Size or Margins. Leave one on its Default to keep what the layout uses. A choice here overrides the layout.

Citations and the reference list

On Plus, your citations and the reference list are Zotero fields. Open the file in Word with the Zotero plugin to change the style or add citations, and the reference list follows. Readers without Zotero see normal text. This works with Zotero's Word plugin, not its plugins for other editors. A blind-review copy has plain-text citations instead.

On Free, citations are plain text in your document's citation style, and the reference list is left out. When the document cites sources, the list's heading and one line saying the list is part of Plus stand in its place. You can still copy the list in Papero with Copy and paste it into the file. See Reference list and compare the plans on pricing.

After the download

Papero tells you when something did not go into the file as it is in Papero:

An equation Word cannot take as an editable equation goes in as a picture, or as its TeX text when there was not enough time to convert it.
An image that could not be added leaves a line in the file that marks its place.
On Plus, a document with very many citations may get plain-text citations instead of Zotero fields.

When the export does not work

If Papero cannot save your latest changes, it offers Export last saved version.
A document with very many citations, a very wide table or very deep nesting can be too large to export. The message names the likely cause.
If you export a lot in a few minutes, Papero asks you to wait before the next one.
This style cannot format this document means the style cannot handle many long author lists, or many sources with the same first author and year. APA, MLA and IEEE can.

Next: export to LaTeX and Overleaf.