Year only citations

Melikesayoglu

Hi, I work with two other colleagues and some of their citations show up as year only citations (the ones that do not have an author). When I click to make changes, I get the following message:
"You have modified this citation since Zotero generated it. Editing will clear your modifications. Do you want to continue?"
When I click on continue, I see the citation information in the Zotero box (with the title of the source written quotation marks followed by the year), however, when I click on enter, nothing will change in the document. The citation stays as a year only citation.
Is there a way to fix this problem? I'd appreciate your assistance.

bwiernik

In the citation editor, click on the blue bubble for item. You should see "Suppress Author" checked. Uncheck this to show the authors again.

Also, the "You have modified this citation since Zotero generated it. Editing will clear your modifications. Do you want to continue?" message indicates that someone edited the citation text (such as to remove the authors, add a page number, or add a prefix or suffix comment) directly in Word. You don't want to do this. Instead, in the citation editor, enter that information in the Page, Prefix, or Suffix fields you see when you click on the blue bubble. This way, Zotero will be able to keep your citations correctly formatted as you continue to edit your document.

Melikesayoglu

Thanks a lot for your response!

The "Suppress Author" is unchecked already.

Here's how I managed to correct the citation: once the Zotero window comes up (after I click on continue), I click on the "classic view" and then find the source from the list. When I enter this way, the citation shows up correctly. If I use the red Zotero window only to make changes, they won't apply even though all the information in blue bubbles remains the same.

adamsmith

My guess would be that you're inserting an old copy of the item without proper author information via the quick format bar (the one with the red bar) by selecting it from under "Cited" rather than "My Library" but hard to say. It'd be rather odd of classic & quick format produced different citations otherwise.

Melikesayoglu

I'm not sure if I'm inserting an old copy of the item. The library should sync automatically and I should have the most updated items in my group library, right? Anyway, thanks a lot for your help.

bwiernik

By "old copy" @adamsmith means you are inserting an item listed under the "Cited" section of the Zotero Insert Citation window. There might be a version of the item that still exists in the document but that you deleted in Zotero itself. Replace all of the offending citations with the one listed under "My Library" or under the same Group Library and the problem will go away.

Melikesayoglu

Excellent! Thank you so much!