[Bug]: Cannot Remove Citation via Word Add-in GUI

jiaojiaodubai23

**Zotero Version**
8.0-beta.3+8355a9540 (64-bit)

**Operating System**
Windows 11

### Reproduction Steps
1. Click **“Add/Edit Citations”** in the Word ribbon.
2. Insert several items into the same citation field.
3. Place the cursor inside that citation.
4. Click **“Add/Edit Citations”** again.
5. Press **Backspace** to remove every item from the candidate list.
6. Press **Enter**.

### Expected Behavior
The entire citation field should be removed.

### Actual Behavior
- If no item is selected in the **Library**, pressing **Enter** has no effect.
- If an item is selected in the **Library**, pressing **Enter** adds that item back to the candidate list instead of clearing the field.

### Suggestions for Improvement
1. Only **pin** the selected item in the Library to the top for quick access; do **not** lock focus on it.
2. Adopt a **checkbox-style** interaction:
- **Space** to select / deselect items.
- **Enter** to confirm / submit the final selection.

poettli

P̶l̶e̶a̶s̶e̶ ̶a̶d̶d̶ ̶"̶Z̶o̶t̶e̶r̶o̶ ̶b̶e̶t̶a̶"̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶i̶t̶l̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶r̶e̶a̶d̶
Not specific to the beta

adamsmith

You know you can just delete the citation in Word without using the Word add-on at all? Is there any reason you're using the Add-edit button for this?

northword

From the perspective of consistent interaction logic, I believe all citation edits should ideally happen within the citation dialog:

1. Since removing individual items must be done inside the citation dialog, why shouldn't removing all items be handled there as well?

2. If the recommended way to remove all items is to delete the field directly in Word, then why not allow users to directly edit the field code to remove some items too? While we know this breaks field updating, that’s exactly why it makes more sense to keep all edits within the citation dialog—to avoid confusion and potential misuse.

adamsmith

There's two reasons for the current logic:

1) It must be possible to delete from Word directly, since otherwise removing large chunks of text including citations would be a giant pain. Most users find that operation completely intuitive for that reason.

2) I don't think this has come up more than once or twice as an issue, so I don't think it's particularly confusing. While we do see folks manually editing citations in unfortunate ways, it's hardly ever to remove items: usually they change parentheses or add page numbers or so. On the other hand, I would expect the ability of using add/edit to completely remove citations to cause occasional misunderstandings.

I think the current behavior is perfectly fine given all we know about user interaction with the add-on.

dstillman

Only **pin** the selected item in the Library to the top for quick access; do **not** lock focus on it.

The whole point of the Selected Items/Open Documents feature is to allow you to just press Add/Edit Citation and then Enter, so this won't be changing.