Styles info GONE & adding Chicago & get "This XML file does not appear to have any style informat

TimRuckle

Of COURSE this happens when I am under deadline and against the wall...

Today my Word (2007) doesn't have styles defined anymore. In fact, the style I was using (Chicago, no ibid) doesn't exist in the styles folder anymore. There are only 12 styles listed total.

If I go into Preferences > Cite > Styles > "add new styles" and try to add one of the Chicago, no ibid (there seem to be a whole bunch of different ones added last month?) I get the error:

This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it

ARGGG. This is Zotero 3 and Firefox 10 and I am filled with pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.

Warm regards,

Tim

dstillman

Are you clicking the title, or are you clicking the Install link? Do the latter.

adamsmith

also - where do you get that "error"? - there is a grey bar at the top of the page that says "This XML file..." that will appear after successful install of a style. If you get prompted whether to install the style and click OK, the style install has worked.

(there is an image here: http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step#install_your_edited_style_with_zotero - the page is about custom styles, so you can ignore anything else you see)

dstillman

If it works you shouldn't see the XML at all (for an Install link, at least—dragging in might be different).

TimRuckle

OK, my bad, I was clicking the title, not install.

However, I'm still worried about how the styles directory got corrupted? I looked at a backup on my flash drive, and there are 3 chicago styles there. I copied them over by hand and was able to use one on a fresh document.

I am now trying to re-enable chicago for an existing document, but having trouble getting Zotero to even respond at all.

/sigh

adamsmith

If there were 12 styles that sounds like the style directory was reset for whatever reason.

"I am now trying to re-enable chicago for an existing document, but having trouble getting Zotero to even respond at all. "
You'll need to be more specific than that.
http://www.zotero.org/support/reporting_bugs

TimRuckle

I loaded the chicago styles I had on backup to the styles folder, and was able to successfully choose and add a chicago citation in the new word doc.

I then realized that the chicago types did not include the "no ibid" one I prefer, and went to preferences to grab that. Afterwards, the zotero options in word were completely unresponsive: I would click on the various options of the custom toolbar in add-ins and nothing happened.

I tried quitting all the way out of word and firefox, with no effect. The network seemed to be fine for other firefox functions.

I basically gave up for the night, posted something dismal on fb, and was about to go watch the Daily Show when I decided to try one more time. For whatever reason it is working again on the test doc.

I'll try the working docs later. Thanks for all your quick replies.

adamsmith

If this happens again (and I think there is a good chance it won't), especially if you're using Windows, the first step would be just to restart your Computer.

You could also look at your error reports in Zotero:
http://www.zotero.org/support/reporting_bugs
no need to actually send one, but you could have a look if there are a number of Zotero related errors in there that sound like they relate to citation styles. If that's the case it's easy enough to reset your style directory (it's an option in the advanced tab of the preferences).

TimRuckle

Again, thanks to everybody for the quick responses. Somehow, for unknown reasons, the problem of Zotero in Word being unresponsive seemed to "work itself out" by morning. I had done a "re-install word add-in" the night before, seemingly without it helping. Weird.

One last thing: After I confirmed my document was working with an older Chicago style, I wanted a Chicago, No Ibid style and updated it for that document. When it went to update in Word, suddenly all the characters looked like crazy 8-bit ascii or somesuch and I had a PTSD panic moment, and then it redrew and updated the style properly.

Lastly, what sorts of things can cause the style directory to "spontaneously reset"?

TL;DR: things are now working, though I'm still anxious

dstillman

Lastly, what sorts of things can cause the style directory to "spontaneously reset"?

Hard to say, but nothing in Zotero itself other than the Reset button. Filesystem corruption could do it. Moving (some) files out of your data directory to a new location and pointing Zotero there could do it. Storing your data directory on Dropbox or a similar third-party syncing service could probably do it.

As a general rule, make sure you have a daily or hourly full-system backup, and then things like this become a lot less stressful.

TimRuckle

Thanks. For that problem, it may well have been dropbox. Though I have Zotero storage, I had previously been syncing my library to dropbox too (until I was having firefox probs that I suspected were file locking weirdness). I'd stopped syncing the data but was still backing up the styles, and maybe something went wrong there.

This doesn't explain some of the other problems I had that evening, but I'm happy things are working smoothly now.