Multiple entries in document

Re_Niew

Hi!

I have a highly specific issue. I am working with my thesis which stretched over years. I have written parts 1, 2 and 3 in separate documents and from separate computers. Now I want to assemble the final version. I have copied the content of all three documents to a single documents. The problem is that Zotero does not seem to automatically merge the entries. Most are merged, but some appear twice in the bibiography and is treated separately in my notes. I want to solve the issue without going through one by one all citations. I have found no exact help for my issue on the forums.

Looking forward to your help.

dstillman

If they appear twice in the bibliography, you inserted different Zotero items — either duplicates or items from different Zotero libraries. I'm afraid you'll need to go through the ones that are duplicated and make sure each citation is pointing to the same item in the library you're using.

(This often happens if you had duplicates in your library and deleted some instead of using Zotero's own duplicate-merging functionality.)

Re_Niew

I would be so disappointed, it means going through like 100+ citations.
I also tried extracting the bibliographic data from my document to my Zotero library with https://rintze.zelle.me/ref-extractor/. Then in Zotero the entries appear as duplicates, then I merged them, but this still not had effect on the document. I do not understand why.

dstillman

Creating new entries and merging them isn't going to do anything. The point is that you previously either had duplicates that you deleted instead of merging or inserted items from different libraries. There's no way to fix this other than by replacing the citations that are pointing to a different library — as far as Zotero knows, these are different, unrelated items, so it has to show them all in the bibliography. This doesn't happen if you always insert the same item.

Re_Niew

Thank you for your answer. I understood and will never do that again.
Is there any way to avoid doing it manually for 100+ entries? Is there any way for Zotero to import bibliography entries from a foreign document and then handle them in that same document as if they were from my Zotero library?

dstillman

No, sorry. Citations are based on item ids. If the ids are different, Zotero will consider them to be different.