Zotero has disowned my footnotes ...

Bucky Ball

Hi all,

First post so be gentle.

Using Xubuntu 12.04 LTS with Libreoffice and the Zotero plugin for a major uni assignment, inserting footnotes via the plugin over the last six months. One of last steps was inserting was to insert the bibliography.

I click on the 'Insert Bibliography' and to my surprise about ten of the thirty or so entries that should be there pop up. After a bit of thinking, I realise the entries that are included in the bibliography are highlighted in the corresponding footnote. For some reason, most of them are no longer highlighted and Zotero has disowned them.

This is a major setback and will consume time I don't have to do manually. I'm desperate to know if these footnotes can be 'reconnected' and extremely curious to know what has happened to disconnect them. Bug, user error, what??? I have a headache ...

Thanks in advance. I'm desperate but not hopeful ...

adamsmith

yeah, you can't reconnect them. Just put them in again, this shouldn't take more than 30mins or so if they're all in Zotero already - make good use of quick format word processor plugin http://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_usage#keyboard_commands and this will be pretty painless.

The two most likely scenarios for this to happen is
1. Saving the document as .doc instead of .odt or
2. Clicking the "Remove Field Codes" button in the word plugin.

I'm not aware of any reports of such links selectively disappearing, so this is highly unlikely to be a bug.

Bucky Ball

Thanks for that. It is actually going to take ages as there are about a hundred and forty footnotes over twenty five pages, some with comments added which means I have to reconnect all of them for a refresh, which works for the ones connected but removes page numbers, naturally.

So I am going to need to reinsert each one manually. Trust me, this is going to take a couple of hours at least. And I haven't turned it into a .doc or removed field codes. All in all, nightmare.

adamsmith

Reference Marks - i.e. what turns those footnotes grey - don't just disappear. Even if Zotero didn't recognize the citations anymore, they'd still be marked as Reference Marks in Libre Office unless something or someone removed them.
I'd suggest you finish your project before trying to track down the cause of this - if you're still interested afterwards I'm happy to try to help you figure out what happened, but that will likely involve some back and forth - so you probably want to do that when you're not stressed out.

Bucky Ball

You're reading my mind, Adam. Reference marks? I'll look into it ...

Cheers

Bucky Ball

Adam, I think it's related to this:

http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/5524/cut-and-paste-work-but-copy-and-paste-doesnt/

I did copy/paste/move chunks of text with refs and even just the refs quite a bit so my guess is that's it. I just didn't notice it disconnect as the document mutated over the last six months.

I'm just going to have to nut it out this time and remember this in future. So I should insert footnotes manually everytime and never copy them? I'll experiment.

Thanks a heap for your help to this point. I really love Zotero; it has really saved me a lot of time over the last four or five years. ;)

Bucky Ball

Yep, that was a simple experiment:

* Open an empty document;
* Insert a ref/footnote;
* Copy/Paste

Footnote 1 is highlighted and footnote 2, naturally, is disconnected. Resolved. Pity there's no way around this as that would save even more time.

adamsmith

ah yes, that would make sense.
This is, btw., not because of Zotero but because of LO, which doesn't copy reference marks (if you're interested you can play with "Paste Special - Shift+Ctrl+V and DDE links - but I believe that will only work if you're just copying a reference and nothing else and no guarantees).
FWIW, cut and paste will work.

Bucky Ball

Thanks again for your help. 'This is, btw., not because of Zotero but because of LO, which doesn't copy reference marks' ... is this different in Openoffice? That is what I always used by since Ubuntu 12.04 OO is a nightmare to install and the default is LibreO. I've found it a little buggy and unstable and some things that are 'experimental' have been used in OO for ages.

One thing in particular: I like to make a macro then assign it to a keycomibination for efficiency. LO doesn't like that and seems to work sometimes and not others.

Oh, well. Adam, you've been a great help in sorting this out so cheers. ;)

adamsmith

it's the same for Ooo.