New citations replace previous ones; sometimes "09/09/2019 09:31:00" in place of new citations

TilmanHartley

When I try to add a citation, it often works as expected. But sometimes, Zotero replaces the previous citation with the new one. Other times, Zotero adds "09/09/2019 09:31:00" where the new citation should be, and again replaces the previous citation with the new one. The date string does not change, it is always "09/09/2019 09:31:00".

So instead of:
"... apples 1, 2 and bananas 3, 4...."

I get:
"... apples 3, 4 and bananas..."

or
"... apples 3, 4 and bananas09/09/2019 09:31:00..."

I have tried all the debugging steps (restart, disable track changes, check captions, copy and pasting, duplicating document, switching style, deleting bibliography). Toggling field codes makes the text unreadable and did not seem to help. Isolating the problematic citations by deleting citations has proved impossible since it is adding new citations that causes the problem. Sometimes the problem seems to go away only to return later. This has been happening for perhaps 4 weeks.

Word for Mac 16.75 (the most recent)
Zotero 6.0.26 (the most recent)

adomasven

Unless you can reliably reproduce this in a new document or a document snippet, we will assume this is a complicated case of document corruption. Even though new citations insert incorrectly, it is likely that that's caused by issues in some other part of the document, which is why isolating the problematic part of the document still applies to you.

adamsmith

Are those citations in a table? This sounds vaguely like what can happen when you insert multiple citations into a single table cell.

TilmanHartley

No, the citations are not in a table. But I am inserting many multiple citations using 'classic view'. I copied everything into a new document and the problem went away for a few days, but now it is back. This has been the recurring pattern for a few weeks now.

How might I isolate the problematic part of the document? In a fresh document there is no problem -- until suddenly there is. Then, if I paste the problematic new citations into another new document, the problem goes away for a while. So I can't think of a way to reliably reproduce this. Is there something you suggest I might try? Many thanks!

TilmanHartley

But in fact adding multiple citations to a table does fairly reliably recreate this problem. Is there a safe way to insert multiple citations into a single table cell? That might also fix the more general problem.