Cannot add bibliography

Natasja1990

Hi, I'm working on my thesis and I am trying to upload the final bibliography. The thesis is long, about 300 pages, with a lot of references. When I press "add bibliography" nothing happens. Can you please advise?

adamsmith

Which word processor/operating system and how long have you let it run? There's no status indicator if it's working and especially on Mac Word this could easily be 30mins+

Natasja1990

I'm using Microsoft word. I have not let it continue running as I did not think it was doing anything. When I try doing it in a document with less pages/footnotes, the mouse starts flickering so I can tell it's doing something and then the bibliography is generated. I will try leaving the document for at least 30 minutes and I'll see what happens.

Natasja1990

Hi I tried this and it did not work. After a while a dialogue box came up asking me to edit bibliography directly from the Zotero library. Could you please advise the next step, or is there something else I can try?

adamsmith

Could you take a screenshot of the dialog box? That's not something that sounds familiar and might indicate something else is going on.

Natasja1990

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u2333520/6lgd0loqw4dgvp5ullyo.png

Natasja1990

Hi there, just following up on the above thread. If you could suggest other ways for generating the bibliography, I'd be most grateful. Otherwise, I suppose the only option is to generate the bibliography individually per chapter and then assemble it manually.

adamsmith

This looks like it thinks there already is a bibliography. Try showing field codes (https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/word_field_codes)
and then
a) make sure that your citations do show up with field codes that say something like ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID" ...
b) find a bit that says ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL and delete that.

Assuming a looks correctly, try inserting the bibliography again.

Also, if you did assemble the thesis from multiple chapters, make sure there's a citation style set in the document by using "Set Document Preferences"

Natasja1990

Hi again,
I have tried pasting the whole thing into a new document and that seemed to have worked! Thank you for the assistance. If I change references in Zotero, will they automatically update in the footnotes as well? I need to change how I have referenced my interviews. Instead of doing this manually, one by one, can I change them all in Zotero and ask the document to update the footnotes in word?
For instance, instead of writing Interview 40, Farmer, Norway, 2024. I want to write, Interview 40, Farmer, 2024.

adamsmith

Yes, that should work, though might take a while. I'd make all changes in Zotero, then hit "Refresh" in the Zotero Word add-on and wait (for possibly quite some time)