Changing reference number in bibliography

JitkaVerdan
I need to remove a few endnotes in my draft. However, when I do so, the remaining references keep the original numbers.

How to renumber them so that they follow consecutively?

When I amend the reference number in the main text, it deletes the endnote. When trying to amend the number in endnotes, I get a message "This is not a valid action for endnotes."

Thanks for your help.
  • adamsmith
    which style? If you're actually talking endnotes, their numbering is entirely handled by your word processor.
  • JitkaVerdan
    Hello, I have this problem both with MLA and MHRA, footnotes and endnotes.
    Basically, when I add a footnote, the number of the following footnotes changes accordingly. When I delete a footnote, however, the number of the following footnotes stay the same, so the sequence goes like 1,2,3,5,6... How to fix this? Thanks!
  • adamsmith
    If you delete a footnote and the remaining ones don't renumber, that's entirely a word processor issue. Zotero has nothing to do with the numbering of footnotes (it just sends an "insert footnote" command to the word processor). My best guess would be that there is some hidden "leftover" from the old footnote (so try deleting some text that surrounded it), but that's about the most we'd be able to say.
  • JitkaVerdan
    It sadly did not help.

    I deleted a whole paragraph that contained the footnote 27 (so there are certainly no leftovers).

    Now I have footnotes 26 and 28. When I want to add a footnote between them, it gets the number 27 but the footnote 28 renumbers to 29. There is no difference if I add this footnote via Zotero or Mac Word footnote. (version 2010, 14.6.7, citation style MHRA)

    Essentially, whenever I remove a footnote from a document, formatting in the rest of the text is numbered incorrectly.

    It is critical for me to fix this issue. I have been relying on Zotero when writing my PhD thesis. Now I need to revise the draft but this issue causes havoc in the footnotes.
  • DWL-SDCA
    edited October 9, 2016
    What adamsmith said is correct and this is very highly unlikely to be related to Zotero. It is something to do with your document.

    If footnote 27 was at the end of the paragraph, even though you deleted the paragraph text you may not have deleted the "insert footnote" command.

    Are you sharing your working document (that contains Zotero field codes) with your supervisor? You should not share the live document. If your supervisor is making comments and sending the thesis back to you it is possible that when you reopen the document that it has been damaged during the exchange. When sharing a document for comments you should 1) make a copy, 2) remove field codes in the copy, and 3) share only the copy. Even better...make a pdf and share that.

    When you share a document and it is opened, edited, otherwise manipulated, saved, and returned all manner of weirdness can occur.

    Do each of your footnotes have Zotero codes or might some of the footnote codes have been removed?

    Do you have a mixture of Word-inserted notes and Zotero-inserted notes?

    Are you using _both_ footnotes and end notes?

    Is this occurring primarily with notes that you tried to amend by editing the _number_ within the text instead of inserting or deleting sentences? It surely seems as though you have remnants of the note field codes in your document.
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