# Number of authors in citations style LibreOffice

**URL:** <https://discourse.jabref.org/t/number-of-authors-in-citations-style-libreoffice/747>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [August 8, 2017, 8:56pm UTC](https://discourse.jabref.org/t/number-of-authors-in-citations-style-libreoffice/747 "2017-08-08T20:56:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ced](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a8b319/32.png) [@ced](https://discourse.jabref.org/u/ced)\
**Post date:** [August 8, 2017, 8:56pm UTC](https://discourse.jabref.org/t/number-of-authors-in-citations-style-libreoffice/747/1 "2017-08-08T20:56:12Z")

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I am trying to set the number of authors appearing in the citation of an entry in LibreOffice document. In the jstyle file fields MaxAuthors or MaxAuthorsFirst (i don’t understand the difference between those two by the way !) does not change anything in the display in LOWriter. I want to have a citation like this [Author1 _et al_, YYYY] with only the first author then ‘et al’ in italic and the year field. Is there any help to do so ?  
Thanks.

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**Author:** ![roginovicci](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e56c9b/32.png) [@roginovicci](https://discourse.jabref.org/u/roginovicci)\
**Post date:** [September 3, 2019, 1:20pm UTC](https://discourse.jabref.org/t/number-of-authors-in-citations-style-libreoffice/747/2 "2019-09-03T13:20:20Z")

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Same question here. Did anyone know the solution?

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**Author:** ![Siedlerchr](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/discourse.jabref.org/siedlerchr/32/216_2.png) [@Siedlerchr](https://discourse.jabref.org/u/Siedlerchr)\
**Post date:** [September 12, 2019, 6:55pm UTC](https://discourse.jabref.org/t/number-of-authors-in-citations-style-libreoffice/747/3 "2019-09-12T18:55:34Z")

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Hi,

according to the code  
`MaxAuthors // The maximum number of authors to write out in full without using etal. Set to -1 to always write out all authors.`

`MaxAuthorsFirst`: The number of authors to write out full when you cite a key.  
Assume you have a paper with 20 authors. Some citation styles require to list the full names of the first 4 authors for the first time. Later it is sufficient to have only maybe (Author A and Author B 2019 et al.)

For your approach it should be sufficient so set both fields to a value of 1.