Zotero deleting manual references from Word Doc bibliography

Hi everyone

I have Zotero synced with Microsoft Word and have never had issues over 3 years. Recently however, it has been failing to save manually typed references within the bibliography (e.g. reports etc that I can't save and sync to Zotero that I had to type in myself).

My peers suggested I manually input the reference into Zotero so the bibliography is always synced. Is this the only way to avoid having external references deleted? I swear Microsoft Word used to be able to cope with a bibliography that has both references from Zotero and typed-in references!

Thanks
  • e.g. reports etc that I can't save and sync to Zotero that I had to type in myself
    You can definitely save reports in Zotero. Even if you can't import them using the web translator, you can manually type the item data into Zotero:
    https://www.zotero.org/support/getting_stuff_into_your_library

    This will let you insert citations using Zotero that automatically update like other items.

    Beyond that, you are correct that you can't manually type things directly into a Zotero bibliography--those changes will be overwritten the next time the Zotero bibliography refreshes (e.g., when you add a new Zotero citation). The best method to add an item to a Zotero bibliography is to insert a citation for it in the document (as described above). The next best option is to click the Edit Bibliography button on the Zotero ribbon tab/toolbar and add the item in that window. The least flexible option is to wait until you have completely finished writing. Then, save a new copy of the document and click the Remove Field Codes button on the Zotero ribbon/toolbar. This will completely disconnect the document from Zotero and convert all citations/bibliography to plain text. Then, you can manually edit the bibliography as you would any other text.

    (Note that you can manually type in a Zotero citation [in-text reference], but this will disable automatically updating of that citation by Zotero.)
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