Zotero off its game today!

rudyleon

I'm editing a large-ish document (333 pages) and Zotero is making me crazy. It's in Chicago 17 author-date. Zotero keeps including author initials in the in-text cites and for every single cite, it's adding an a or b to the year. I have verified against my library that the first name and last name are in separate fields and that the problematic entries have only one item for those authors in that year.

This is really an enormous problem.

Zotero 6.0.26, Zotero says there are no updates, using Word on a PC and the Zotero desktop library (which is having a problem syncing to webdav, but that shouldn't have anything to do with this, should it?)

adamsmith

You're somehow working with duplicated items nevertheless. Two likely possibilities: either the items are in different libraries (i.e. a group and a personal library) or one set of items are stored just in the metadata and have either been inserted with a different library (either group or another user's personal library) or from items originally duplicate and then deleted in your personal library.

You can show field codes (https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/word_field_codes ) and look at the uri for two items that show up as a, b to get an idea which of these you're looking at. Unfortunately, I don't think any of them have a simple solution that doesn't involve re-inserting citations.

rudyleon

I've been reinserting them! And when I search by first author, only one entry for the year shows up. If there were a and b entries, they would show up in the search, yes? (I mean both the insertion search inside the manuscript and the search in my library as a whole)

FWIW, it's doing a poor job of showing me duplicates too -- I can see them in the library (and they are the same type) but don't show as duplicates in the duplicate folder. I have no idea if this glitch is also related)

adamsmith

I mean both the insertion search inside the manuscript and the search in my library as a whole

You said that you're not seeing them duplicate in your library, so the scenarios above all describe situations where you'd get 2021a, b without seeing a duplicate in your library.
You *would* see duplicates when using the quick format add citation dialog (the search box with a red frame) but not when using the classic one (that basically looks like the main Zotero window). If you want to figure out what's going on, look at the field codes. If you post two uris here, (they'll be something like http://zotero.org/users/76252/items/UUKSSZVK ), we can also at least venture an informed guess.

And no, duplicate detection in your library isn't relevant for whatever happens in a Word doc.

rudyleon

The "insertion search inside the manuscript" is, I think, what you are referring to as "the quick format add citation dialog (the search box with a red frame) "

I don't thiunk I can show the field codes for a or b, because Zotero is randomly assigning a or b to onlies. For example, Jung and Freud 2002 is the only work in the entire library by Jung & Freud, but Zotero's quick insertion is picking up my Jung and inserting (Jung and Freud 2002a). There is no 2002b. There shouldn't be a 2002a (sometimes it will pick something exactly like this as b)

adamsmith

Insert a bibliography to check -- in all likelihood you'll see 2002a and 200b in there and you can then search for both in the manuscript and show the field codes for those.
Forget about your library for the moment. Duplicate metadata can also just be in the Word doc directly as per my above.

Zotero will definitely not include suffixes unless it sees two works by the same author(s) & same year -- either duplicates or items that actually need disambiguation, so they're somewhere.