Reference section duplicating items

rwogan

My reference section keeps reverting to duplicating the same items with yearA and yearB. I've combed through my document and removed all that potential duplicates making sure I replaced them with the same citation. This worked for a day but now I refresh and it's duplicating them again. How can I solve this?

dstillman

That's really all there is to it. You'll need to fix your document to remove citations that use different versions of the same source.

If you're having trouble finding them, the last step on Troubleshooting Errors in Word Processor Documents explains how to cut down your document quickly to identify problems.

rwogan

As I said the problem is I've done this and it's still duplicating them in the reference section...

In my zotero desktop application there is only one item for each reference and yet it's duplicating them in the document.

Any solutions?

dstillman

Having one item in your Zotero library doesn't mean anything. This could still happen due to deleted items. See https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/given_name_disambiguation#deleted_items (different issue, same cause).

And again, you can follow the steps I mentioned to quickly cut down your document to find the relevant citations.

adamsmith

You could try switching to a numeric citation style to figure out where the respective items are in the document.

In my zotero desktop application there is only one item for each reference and yet it's duplicating them in the document

Note that Zotero stores item metadata in the document the first time an item is cited, so only having one copy in Zotero is immaterial: what matters is the number of copies from which the citations were created.