Disclaimer: This is an independent learning project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Zotero or its developers. Always check the official Zotero documentation for the latest instructions.

Learn Zotero in your first week

This academy is for graduate students starting a literature review or thesis. It is built from an analysis of 145 real, public Zotero support questions — the problems people actually ask for help with, not a feature tour.

Unofficial, always check the source. This is an independent learning project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Zotero or its developers. Every lesson links to the official Zotero documentation and carries a version stamp: “Last verified against Zotero 10.0.6 documentation on 2026-10-25.”

Choose your path

Path	For	Lessons	Time
Getting started	You have Zotero (or are about to) and a pile of papers to read	4	≈ 25 min
Writing with citations	You need to cite in Word, LibreOffice or Google Docs without formatting pain	4	≈ 25 min
Power user	You have a library and need sync, annotations, or a team workspace	3	≈ 20 min

In a hurry? Jump straight to:

• Your first citation in 5 steps — one-page job aid
• Fix the 5 most common citation errors — one-page job aid
• Troubleshooting tool — guided fixes for the 5 most common problems in the support data
• Skills check — 9 scenario questions with feedback; nothing is stored

How the academy was designed

Every lesson moves an activation milestone — from first capture (M1) to first citation (M3, the academy’s headline activation event) to sync (M5). The curriculum comes from the support question analysis: 62% of the 128 support questions and bug reports fall into five categories, and 40% were education-fixable — knowledge gaps or avoidable documented behaviors.

If something breaks

Go straight to the troubleshooting tool. It walks you through the five most common problems from the support data, one fix at a time, and tells you honestly when a problem needs the official forums instead of a fix.