Libreoffice, word2011, .docx, and heavy black brackets

dd123
Hi, I hope that someone can help me. I'll start from the beginning.

I used to use the Zotero FF plugin with MS Office 2004 running on a macbook pro. I tried to open my thesis today, and word wouldn't open it. I tried a bunch of things, which didn't work, and decided to switch to Libreoffice. But it couldn't open the .doc properly, due to having used fields instead of bookmarks. So I downloaded the trial version of MS Office 2011, installed the Zotero plugin, and opened up the file. All of the citations had heavy black brackets around them; to be fair, I can't recall if this was before or after I tried to convert them from fields to bookmarks.

Regardless, I can't work with (and my advisor definitely can't work with) these brackets. He uses word, and will not switch to OL.

During one of my attempts to convert from fields to bookmarks, things got scrambled such that citations were in the wrong place in the text. I tried it a few times, no better luck. So I spent hours moving the text to a new LO doc, first saving as .docx and setting citations to be bookmarks/refs not stored in doc (I read somewhere that was a good strategy), and replacing all of the citations so there were no more black brackets. After a few pages I tested it out, saving it, closing it, formatting the bibliography, and all looked good. So I proceeded to move all of the text over, replacing the citations as I went. I saved it (still as .docx), closed it, and now LO won't reopen it. The app opens, progress bar appear, then "quits unexpectedly." I can open the .docx in Word 2011, but the blasted black brackets are back. Changing the setting from bookmarks to fields or VV and hitting refresh doesn't change anything.

Can anyone help me figure out what's going on? I'd like to 1) get LO to work with Zotero in a way that I can save (and reopen!) as doc/.docx without heavy black brackets, or 2) I'll fork out for Word 2011, in which case I still need to get rid of the black brackets.

Thanks so much for any help that can be offered!
  • adamsmith
    could you upload a screenshot of those black brackets to a free image hosting site like imgur.com and provide a link here - I don't think I've ever heard of, let alone seen this.
  • dd123
    Hi there Adam, I've uploaded it here:

    http://imgur.com/Er6Ta
  • adamsmith
    that looks like it might just be a display issue - if you print the page or convert it to pdf, am I right that the dark brackets go away?
    If so, Work may have introduced the (very sensible) feature that bookmarks are set apart visually. In that case I'm sure you can turn that off, but you're probably better of asking how on a Word forum.
    If not, we'll have to think of something else.

    If LO saves a docx it can't open that's a LO issue, so you should report it there.
  • dd123
    You're right: it doesn't appear on a pdf, and now I see that they appear only when formatted as bookmarks. Let me look at it in the morning, and after looking into the LO avenue. I'll let you know what I find out, thanks so much for your speedy help, I appreciate it a lot!
  • dd123
    Update: I think some of the problems I'd been having were due to some refs formatted as fields: those docs either gave me XML errors or crashed OL. Sticking with bookmarks seems to remedy things (as was clearly stated by Zotero materials). The black brackets I could turn off in Word via file>preferences>view> uncheck "show bookmarks." For some reason, inserting a new citation always turns it back on, but at this point, it's not a problem for me, I'll work in LO rather than word.

    Again, thanks for your help.
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