Automatic export

The Better BibTeX Configuration can be found under the regular Zotero preferences pane, tab ‘Better BibTeX’.

The configuration of Better BibTeX is a little baroque compared to the standard Zotero Bib(La)TeX exporters (which only have hidden preferences). The defaults should just work, but here’s an attempt to describe what they do.

Making any change here will drop your entire export cache. This is usually not a problem unless you have a really large library, but you can read about what is involved here.

Automatic export

default: On Change

Determines when [automatic exports]({{ ref . “exporting” }}) are kicked off. Having it disabled still marks auto-exports as needing updates, so when you re-enable it, those exports will start. On-change means exports happen whenever an item in the export changes/is added/is removed. On idle does more or less what Disabled (that is, no exports but mark as needing changes), but will kick off exports when your computer is idle. You mostly want this if your computer is performance-constrained (aka slow).

Options:

  • On Change
  • When Idle
  • Paused

Delay auto-export for

default: 5

If you have auto-exports set up, BBT will wait this many seconds before actually kicking off the exports to buffer multiple changes in quick succession setting off an unreasonable number of auto-exports. Minimum is 1 second. Changes to this preference take effect after restarting Zotero.