Changing a Page Number Undoes All Changes in a Footnote

philgons

I create a lengthy footnote that cites five sources and discusses the position of the first in detail. After I'm finished, I notice that I had the page number wrong for one of the sources, so I open the note in the editor and change the page number. The note then refreshes, and all of my changes are gone! This seems to happen every time you edit a page number after having made changes to the footnote. This is either a horrible bug or a major oversight.

Anyone else having this experience?

philgons

Okay, it appears that you shouldn't input text into the editor directly, but rather use the Prefix and Suffix fields. It wasn't obvious to me what those were for until I tried them.

So here's a question: is it ever appropriate or desirable to input text directly into the editor, or is it just for editing text that has been entered in the Prefix and Suffix fields?

bdarcus

I'm not exactly sure what you're doing, but you should only enter or edit locators (page numbers for citations and such) from within the citation insertion and editing UI. You should never edit the content of the citation field (or any field, for that matter).

In my view, extensive commentary should not go in prefix or suffix. You should insert a footnote, and add the citation(s) within that.

But I'm relying on a key distinction: between footnoted citations (where the footnote is only an artifact of the style) and citations in footnotes (where those citations would be there regardless of the style).

philgons

Bruce, you're a lifesaver. I didn't realize that you could insert a Zotero citation into an existing footnote!! This makes things way easier! I thought all of the contents of a Zotero footnote had to be created using the insert footnote feature. Thanks for helping me get that straight!

Please pardon the newbie.