Bibliography not updating automatically with citations

evakiparizoska
My bibliography is not updating automatically when I am adding citations. I have over 15 citations that were working and adding to bibliography, and it has just stopped automatically updating. None of the settings of zotero were changed. I've tried updating the program and restarting my computer and nothing has worked. How can I fix this so that I will not have to manually add my new citations.
  • dstillman
    Are the citations and bibliography still active fields? What happens if you delete the bibliography and reinsert it with Add/Edit Bibliography?

    If nothing is active, see Existing Citations Not Detected.
  • evakiparizoska
    I have tried deleting the bibliography and reinsert it with add/edit bibliography but it only does it for some sources and it is not formatting correctly even thought it is supposed to be formatted as APA. it just inserts it as plain text and not formatted at all.
  • dstillman
    edited April 17, 2023
    For the format, you'd have to show us what you're actually getting, but make sure you've selected APA in the plugin's Document Preferences window.

    If sources are missing, they aren't active citations in the document — the bibliography is just a representation of the active Zotero citations in the document. See the page linked above.
  • evakiparizoska
    I saw the page above and put it into a new MS Word doc and when I added the in text citation it didn't automatically add to the bibliography. Then, I pressed Add/Edit bibliography and the missing citations showed up (they were not added into the existing list in alphabetical order). Do you know what I could do to 1. have them automatically add to the bibliography without having the press Add/Edit Bibliography every time and 2. how to ensure that they add in alphabetical order.
  • dstillman
    edited April 17, 2023
    I really can't explain it more than the page above. Obviously in a new document if you insert citations and insert a bibliography it will work. The problem is in your existing document, where it sounds like something you did — likely how you saved the file, as explained in detail on the page above — caused some of the citations to be flattened. The page explains how to test that and how to fix it (i.e., by reinserting the flattened citations).
  • evakiparizoska
    Yes I think I have fixed my issue. Thank you so much for your help! How I saved the file seemed to be the issue. Thanks!
  • tedo
    I have been experiencing the same issue in LibreOffice Writer for about a month or two. Zotero fields are active and are updating according to changes in the Zotero database. But not bibliography. The only way to update the bibliography is to delete the existing one and insert the new one. After that, the new one is not updating as well. Zotero is 7.0.15. OS is Linux Debian 12, Plasma KDE DE.
    It was never an issue; it worked like a charm for many, many years.
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