Field code for in-text citations is corrupted - Word PlugIn problem

Grywat_Con

Dear Zotero-community,

this thread hints at some threads posted between the years 2010 and 2012.

https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/17054/zotero-field-code-has-been-corrupted#latest

https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/15032/the-field-code-in-this-document-is-corrupted/

I'm working at an evaluation institute in Germany and throughout the last few month we repeatedly faced the above mentioned problem, that whenever we are jointly working on a Word document the Zotero field codes cannot connect the citation to the belonging entry in the Zotero library anymore. We are then being asked whether we want to manually select the respective entry. After clicking either of the two options (yes/ no) another notice pops up asking whether we want to retain the changes made to the respective citation; "yes" will cause in not refreshing the citation whereas "no" causes a removal of made changes.
Choosing no for both notices for every single citation will solve the problem until the document gets shared between people again.

We figured, that this problem is quite likely connected to the track changes feature and compared our solution to the one found here:

https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_troubleshooting#debugging_broken_documents

Following the steps described on the help page above did not solve the problem in the long run, so we are facing this problem with every new document shared.

Since we cannot forgo sharing the documents, we decided to turn to the community to see, if there might be another way to solve this problem permanently.
Does any of you happen to have encountered a way to solve the above mentioned problem?

Thanks in advance for your help and a great day to all of you!


Kind regards,
Constantin

adamsmith

I'm a bit confused -- what's the exact error message you're getting (in the original language you're getting it; don't translate or paraphrase)? A field in your document is corrupted is a very distinct problem from not being able to find the reference.

adomasven

You should generally not see those errors if you had ticked "Store references in documents" in the document preferences. If it is unticked, you should still not get missing reference errors if you and your colleagues are in the same Zotero group and cite items from the shared library.

If you don't have a Zotero group and your work heavily relies on shared research, you should certainly consider creating one and citing items from the group, instead of individual Zotero libraries.

Grywat_Con

Dear adamsmith,

thanks for your super fast response.

The error message is as follows:

Der Zotero-Feld-Code zu dieser Zitation, der Zotero mitteilt, zu welchem Eintrag in Ihrer Bibliothek die Zitation gehört, ist beschädigt. Wollen Sie den Eintrag erneut auswählen?

Wenn Sie "Nein" anklicken, werden die Feld-Codes für Zitationen, die diesen Eintrag enthalten, gelöscht, und damit der Zitationstext erhalten, aber möglicherweise aus dem Literaturverzeichnisch gelöscht.

To what we usually respond with "no", followed by the following notice:

Sie haben Veränderungen an dieser Zitation vorgenommen, nachdem sie von Zotero erstellt wurde. Wollen Sie Ihre Veränderung beibehalten und spätere Updates verhindern?

Wenn Sie "Ja" auswählen, wird Zotero diese Zitation nicht aktualisieren, wenn Sie weitere Zitationen hinzufügen, einen anderen Zitationsstil wählen oder die Literaturangabe, auf die sie sich bezieht, verändern. Wenn Sie "Nein" wählen, werden Ihre Veränderungen gelöscht.

Hope this helps!

Many thanks in advance!

adomasven

Do you get the repeated errors if you save the document and open it yourself again, or does the problem only occur when you transfer the document from one computer to another?

Grywat_Con

It also happens when I open it myself again.

adomasven

Are you using track changes or have inserted citations in tables or captions?

Grywat_Con

Dear adomasven,

"Store references in documents" is already ticked.

But the group thing could be worth a try.

Thanks for the tip!

Grywat_Con

Track changes is enabled and we'd also need to have it activated.

There are (usually) no citations inside tables or captions.

adomasven

Can you still reproduce the problem if you accept all track changes revisions?

Grywat_Con

No it is usually gone by then, but naturally all changes are accepted then, too.
The problem will re-occur once changes are made in track changes mode though.

adomasven

Citing should generally work with track changes, but it certainly makes the situation more complicated. What versions of Zotero and Word are you running?

Grywat_Con

Citing does in fact run smoothly until you use track changes and send documents to other team-members.

We are running on

Word 2013 (15.0.4927.1000), 64-Bit

and

Zotero 4.0.29.10

adomasven

Well, you should update to Zotero 4.0.29.17, although I'm not sure whether that will help.

For testing's sake, could you produce the smallest snippet that uses Track Changes and breaks citations (i.e. a couple of paragraphs), save that as a doc and email to support@zotero.org along with a link to this forum thread?

adomasven

I cannot reproduce the problem running Zotero 4.0.29.17, Word 2013 (15.0.4927.1000) and Windows 10 with the document snippet that you have sent. Adding and Editing citations works fine. After editing, saving and reopening the document Zotero functions as expected.

Grywat_Con

Dear adomasven,

I just checked the document again and it really seems like there is no problem anymore . . .
I don't know what happened between yesterday and today, but it seems to work now.

I'll check back with the team-members working on that bit.

Sorry, for the inconvenience caused and the time you spend on this.


Thank you so, so much for you support!

In case the problem occurs again, may I use this thread to get in touch with you guys again?

adamsmith

Yes this thread is great to follow-up -- Adomas will want the same thing he asked for above if this re-occurs -- a minimal document with which to reliable reproduce the problem.