Zotero incorrectly citing in Word 2011 (Mac)

studemeyercc

Today I went through my Zotero standalone and deleted some duplicate entries I had. When I go into my document (which is my freaking doctoral thesis!!!!) and attempt to modify already existing citations or add in new citations, Zotero cites the journal articles whose entries I've changed completely incorrectly.

Specifically, the problem I'm having is that it will cite a journal article as "(Young, 1989b)" as if there are two Zotero entries for 1989 journal articles from author Young. However, there is only *one* entry in my Zotero for the author Young.

Why is it placing "a" or "b" behind certain citations as if it is distinguishing between TWO entries from the same year written by the same author when there is one, and only one, entry for that author in Zotero standalone?

How do I properly update my document to reflect the changes I've made in Zotero standalone (such as deleting duplicate entries)?

Someone save me!! This is my doctoral dissertation!!!

Thank you!

adamsmith

This is likely a result of deleting (rather than merging) duplicates. Zotero uses internal item IDs to cite items in documents - you've likely cited to different versions of the same article, then deleted one version. Now Zotero relies on the data for that item stored in that document.
Best advice I can give you is to find out which one of the two is the item in your library (insert the citation again, make your you select it from "My Library" not from "Cited Items" and then use that to replace all the other instances. Sorry that won't be fast. In the future, do use the "merge duplicates" feature rather than deleting duplicates.

studemeyercc

Thank you for the suggestion.

I tried doing this-- re-inserting the citation from "My Library" instead of "cited items" and it still is citing a "b" version of the document. I've tried completely deleting the entry from zotero and then re-entering it in the standalone... followed by re-inserting the citation. This hasn't worked either.

Any other suggestions or am I just totally screwed :(

aurimas

And you do not see the a version of the citation?

fbennett

You're going to be fine.

(Do check adamsmith's question first. If there is a "Young 1989a" entry as well as "Young 1989b", the note below may help.)

The "a" and "b" year suffixes were definitely caused by citing multiple copies of the Young 1989 item. Having multiple copies in the Standalone/Zotero database isn't itself a problem (although duplicates should be merged to avoid confusion): it's citing different copies of the item in the document that triggers the suffix.

As adamsmith says, once the cited item was deleted from Standalone/Zotero, the word processor plugin will have fallen back to using the data stored in the document. All such entries will need to be reset to point at the still-existing unique item to make the suffixes go away.

You can quickly check whether a particular cite to "Young 1989" is to the now-deleted item by opening it for editing (with the normal QuickFormat popup, not in Classic View mode). Open the citation for editing and click on the "Young 1989" bubble. If an entry for it exists in the Standalone/Zotero database, there will be an "Open in Library" button at the bottom of the dropdown menu. If there is no button, the item has been deleted, and you will need to delete and reinsert it.

If all "Young 1989" items have corresponding entries in the Standalone/Zotero database and you are still getting the "a" and "b" suffixes, then they must be pointing at different items. In that case, use the "Open in Library" button on each to check the entry at which each is pointing. To discriminate between them (in case each has exactly the same metadata recorded) you can add a note in the Extra field of the first one you open, and check that all other references point at that same item.

studemeyercc

THANK YOU all so much for your help. I was able to solve the issue with the duplicate entry data.

I cannot tell you how grateful I am!