Report ID 1925897068: Cannot edit citations

meiragold

I'm using Zotero standalone version 4.0.29.15 with Word 2016. When I try to edit a citation, I get an eror message that says "You must place the cursor in a Zotero citation to edit it." I click on the citation, attempt to edit, and get the same error message. I closed and reopened zotero and word, and restarted my computer, but this did not fix the problem. I saved it as a new document, and copied and pasted into a new document, and that did not help. I do not have the same problem in new documents. How do I fix this??

adomasven

Does editing work in new documents?

The behaviour you're observing generally indicates, that the underlying field codes that connect the citations to Zotero have been removed, which could have happened if the document was edited with an online Word processor, like Google Docs.

meiragold

I tried this with a new document, and it had the same problme initially. But now it works in new documents. I haven't edited the document in any online word processor. So how do I fix this or restore the underlying codes?

adomasven

If your supervisor or someone else who you may have shared the doc with edited and saved it online, the result would be the same. If the codes are gone your only option is to work from an earlier backup.

meiragold

No one else has edited my document. It was working yesterday and stopped today. I don't think the coeds are gone. There must be another solution...

adomasven

Are you storing citations in this document as Fields or Bookmarks (can be checked in Document Preferences from the word plugin). If it is Fields, you should enable Field shading in Word Preferences -> View and see if the citations are shaded grey.

meiragold

Ok, I did this and three citations appear in grey. What do I do now?

adamsmith

Can you edit those citations?

meiragold

Yes, but those are the only ones I can edit.

dstillman

Unfortunately this means that the citations not in gray were somehow converted to regular text, either with the Remove Field Codes button or by saving via another program or format.