Duplicating then using the wrong entry

JD123

Hello
I'm hoping someone can offer me some insight into how to get out of this jam.
When adding items to my collection that were multiple chapters in one edited book, I was duplicating entries and then changing the chapter authors and titles in order to keep the book title and editors (and publishers) the same.
I just found out that if I had a citation pointing to chapter A, duplicated A, edited first entry A (not the duplicate) to become chapter B, the citation would not point at the duplicate A but at the B, changing the citation in my word file.
Is there a way I can figure out which of my citations have been unintentionally changed from A to B? I'm not just talking about one citation; this has potentially happened with a very large number of entries (this is my PhD dissertation).
The only thing I can think of is to see which sources I have entered in Zotero (the 'chapter As' as it were) do not show up in the document and then try to figure out which Bs should become As. This is a complete mess. I'm hoping someone can think of something easier.
I would be very appreciative for the advice.
Thank you.

adamsmith

Sorry, there is no good way to track this down. You can restrict a Zotero search to book chapters and if you have an idea when you made those changes you could work with date modified - but there is no automatic or easy way of fixing that, sorry.

JD123

Thank you for that quick response. I am trying to come up with something.

Is it possible to have Zotero tell me when it is making a change during a 'refresh' to see what it changes?
Is it possible to have it tell me whether there is a citation in my file that is no longer in my library?

adamsmith

"Is it possible to have Zotero tell me when it is making a change during a 'refresh' to see what it changes?"
no.

"Is it possible to have it tell me whether there is a citation in my file that is no longer in my library?"
Zotero will do that already - but it goes by the internal item ID, not by how that citation looks. By design it's possible to change the content of an item in the Zotero database without Zotero complaining.

JD123

Thanks. I realize the second question is the opposite of what I needed. I want Zotero to tell me if there's something in the library that is no longer in my file. I realize that's not possible (or is it?). So my best option may be the original plan which is to see which items are no longer cited. Then find their nearest equivalents (chapters from the same book). Any other insight is appreciated.

JD123

I just thought of another way that I might be able to fix this mess. If I put page ranges in my library for each chapter, is it possible to find out if any citations are outside the permissible page range? That would solve that pretty easily I think.

adamsmith

No - Zotero doesn't get any data back from the citations in the word document, so you can't do any searches etc. on them.

JD123

OK. Thanks again for the feedback.
I think my best bet is to do a search and see which citations fall outside the possible page range. And for citations that don't give a page, I'll just have to check them manually. I've made a list of 55 citations that came from the duplicating process.

JD123

Hi. I think I may have found a way to solve this along the lines you suggested:

If library entry x was created and modified before entry y (which is from the same book which means it was a duplicate) was created, then there should be no misattributed citations in my work related to these entries.

If entry x shows it was created but modified after entry y's creation, then it likely means that entry y is the duplicate (of original y) and any citations that pointed to the original y are now attributed to x.

Does that sound right?

adamsmith

yes, that would seem like a good idea. You'll have to see if it works in practice for you, but the general idea should work.