Unwanted square brackets in citations

AngelicaEMB

Hi there,
Some background:
recently upgraded to mountain lion and I use Word 2011.

The problem:
when inserting a citation this happens, automatically --> [ (Anybody, 2013; Every time et al., 2013) ] <-- unwanted or not requested and unable to delete square brackets. It does not seem to be related with the style of citation nor whether the document is .doc or docx.

Potentially related to this problem, when I change Word preferences-view-field shading to "always" or "when selected" it does not highlight the area where the citation is inserted (as it used to do in snow leopard)

Any ideas as to how can one prevent this from happening? How to fix it?
Thank you in advance

adamsmith

do you see the square brackets when you print the document (or save it as PDF)?

AngelicaEMB

Hi Adam,
I have not printed the document, but as a PDF the brackets are not visible.

Somehow I ended up creating a new document, copying the entire text and adding the references again (which is not really desirable anyway). The problem did not appear in the new document. I do worry that this can happen again, though.
Thanks.

adamsmith

If the PDF doesn't show the brackets, this is just a display issue in Word and unrelated to Zotero - I'd guess that under "Set Document Preferences" you have "Bookmarks" instead of "Fields" selected.

AngelicaEMB

Yes, you are right.
Thanks for that!

adamsmith

So just to add to that - you can get the highlighted fields back by switching to "Fields" in the Document Settings. There is also almost certainly a setting to no display the square brackets in Word, but I don't know where that is atm.

AngelicaEMB

Hi Adam,
Well, the problem got interesting now.
Once switched, the citation got funky.

It has a very large text, like the instructions for zotero to write the proper style of citation.
Example: {ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID:"sCQTLoV","properties":{"formattedCitation";"(Belt 1874)":"plainCitation";
........and so on. It appears to me like a code to insert the citation.

Again as a PDF, the citation appears normal.
Is this again something from Word? I tried selecting the "Bookmarks" and "Fields" but nothing changed (additionally now if I insert page numbers it will display a code too {PAGE }).
Anyway, I had to switch back to selecting only "Bookmarks" for the sake of visualisation.
I have no idea if the square brackets will appear again or not. At least this does not affect the pdf [and most likely] nor the printed version.

aurimas

After switching to Fields, press Alt+F9 (i.e. toggle field codes). The large chunks of { } enclosed text (i.e. field codes) should turn into proper citations