[Tex/LaTex] Citation key changes when syncing Mendeley with Overleaf

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I'm using Mendeley to manage references for a paper I'm writing in Overleaf. If I export a bibtex file from Mendeley, the citation keys match what I see in the program [AuthorYear]. However, if I sync my references directly from Mendeley using Overleaf, the citation keys of most are changed to [AuthorYearFirstLast] where First and Last are the first and last words of the title. Is this a bug with Overleaf? Is there a workaround either to change the default citation key for Mendeley or change how Overleaf imports citations?

Best Answer

I found a workaround for this from the desktop version of Mendeley:

  1. (I think this is optional, but useful) Go to Tools > Options > Document Details tab. For each relevant "Document type", or all, enable the Citation Key field and Apply.
  2. Select all your documents and press Ctrl-K (copy as latex citation command). Now all your documents have a fixed citation key with the AuthorYear format.
  3. Sync your changes

And that's it. If you now reimport the references from Overleaf all citation keys should be in the correct format.

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