How to recover the link between Zotero and footnotes in Word document

joycechee
I’ve been using Zotero to insert citations into my Word document, so that any updates to my references would be reflected consistently when I click the 'Refresh' button in the Zotero add-in.

However, to my surprise, the footnotes in my Word document have lost their link to Zotero. This means I can no longer update my references in real time by clicking 'Refresh'.

This is quite disastrous, especially as I anticipate further changes ahead. I would truly appreciate any advice on how to recover the link between Zotero and my footnotes in Word. Thank you in advance!
  • dstillman
    https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/existing_citations_not_detected
  • joycechee
    edited yesterday at 5:04pm
    Thank you so much, dstillman! The URL you shared is indeed very helpful.

    However, I am perplexed by the possible reasons that may have caused my citations to become inactive. I don't believe any of listed reasons apply to my situation. I'm quite certain of this because a total of six Word documents are affected. I could not have accidentally unlink the citations in all six.

    I wonder if this might be a bug in Zotero that we should be aware of?

    Thank God I managed to restore the documents using backup files. I cannot imagine having to reinsert all the citations as it would take me months to redo such extensive work.

    I’d be grateful for any further insights from experienced Zotero users.
  • dstillman
    edited today at 4:45am
    No, the only known causes are listed on that page. To be clear, manually running Unlink Citations is only one of several possibilities.

    Zotero inserts standard Word fields, and those should be preserved as long as you save as .docx using Word. If multiple documents of yours became flattened, there's likely something about your specific workflow — e.g., opening them with some other tool — that's breaking the fields.
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