Creating bibliography from merged document

mytummyhurts

I've created a document in Word for Mac 2008, by merging (inserting) several independent docs together. They all have Zotero citations from the same library. However, when I go to add a bibliography I get a message saying "You must insert a citation before performing this operation." Is it not possible to add a bibliography to a merged document?

ajlyon

How did you merge them? Can you confirm that the citations were editable in the several original documents?

mytummyhurts

Citations were definitely live (able to convert to a bibliography) in the original document. In fact, if I "insert" the documents to a new document without linking them, the bibliography works. But its linking them that I want so that I can keep editing where necessary, rather than continually compiling 10 chapters (!) every time I need a bibliography.

Thanks

ajlyon

Are you using the master document function to combine them? I've heard bad things about its compatibility with Zotero, and about its stability in general. If not, I don't understand what you mean by linking versus inserting documents.

mytummyhurts

I wasn't using a master document, per se. I just started with a regular document, used the Insert pulldown...File... and then when it gave me the documents to choose from there is a toggle to "link to file." I'm guessing it must be this link to file option that is causing problems?

adamsmith

This definitely works in principle.
Are you using copy and paste? That'd be the way to go.

mytummyhurts

Not copy and paste. Is it possible to link with copy and paste?

adamsmith

ah ok, I didn't catch the part of how you inserted - that won't work, at least at this time it won't.
The only way to get one single bibliography of several word documents is to paste them into one single document and the create a bibliography. You can't have separate documents and a unified bibliography.