Citation and bibliography trouble

emilywalling

Hello, I was able to successfully add citations for about half of a manuscript (up to about 65 citations) I closed the document to resume at a later date, when I reopened it and tried to continue adding citations, zotero started over with #1. Is it possible to get the program to recognize that it's already created citations? Do I need to start over and complete it all at once? I apologize if this is redundant. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks, Emily

adamsmith

Unfortunately, in all likelihood, the old citations are gone. Which word processor are you working with? In what format (file extension) did you save the document? Did you happen to open it in any other software (e.g. google docs) in between?

emilywalling

Thanks for getting back to me and I'll apologize in advance for my computer illiteracy- I'm working on a mac and am using word for my word processor. I saved the file as .docx and yes, I believe I did open it in google docs in between. I take it that shouldn't be done?

adamsmith

yes, unfortunately google docs, while it saves the "visible" part of your document, loses the the so called "Fields" in which Zotero stores the citation information, so anything linking the document to Zotero is lost.

Many folks have automated back-ups of their files using Time Machine on Mac, though, so you could see if you can go back to an earlier version of the document to get back the citations.

emilywalling

Thanks for your help!