Cannot unlink citations

I have a final version of a document ready for submission to a client, and I need to unlink the citations now that everything is final so that they receive a flat text. Though Zotero is open alongside Word (where I am using the Zotero plugin), each time I click "unlink citations" I receive an error that "you must insert a citation before performing this operation." Yet all the citations are still Zotero-linked.

Copying the text into a new document and trying it there did not help.

Steps to reproduce:

Open Word document with Zotero citations
Open Zotero
Click "Unlink citations" in Zotero toolbar within Word
Receive error message.

Report ID: 1524002244
  • If you click an existing citation and click Add/Edit Citation, does that work?

    You may have just already flattened the document another way (e.g., by saving the document in the wrong format), which could break citations without actually removing them.

    You can convert all Word fields to plain text in Word itself by doing a Select All followed by Cmd-Shift-F9 (or possibly Fn-F9 on your keyboard).
  • Thanks dstillman, I think yes, flattening without removing is what has happened here. Is there any remedy for that?

    The Fn-F9 trick did not work for me because I get an error in word that the action cannot be performed on footnotes - which is where my Zotero citations are.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    edited October 5, 2022
    To be clear, it's Cmd-Shift-F9, not Fn-F9 alone. I'm just saying that, depending on your keyboard setup, you may need to include the Fn key (i.e., Cmd-Shift-Fn-F9) for the F9 key to mean F9.
  • Hallelujah, that works! Thanks!
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