Old bibliographical data in document

C Schel87

Hi Zotero community,

I am the Zotero tutor at my university, and I was recently approached by a fellow grad student who had a problem I could solve, so I would appreciate any input that might help solve this.

The person changed (it is not clear whether she deleted and added a new one or changed the existing record) in her zotero library to refer to another edition of a book. However, even after these changes in her library, references in the notes of an older document retain the same old and deleted bibliographical data, also after refreshing. Has anyone had an experience with this and is there a solution? The style used is Chicago (full notes, 16th edition).

Thanks in advance!

LiborA

Correct me if I do not understand correctly:
One student has a citation with of any item "non actual" data in the Word or LO document and in Zotero database she has different data for the same item. Data in Word/LO document are not changed after refreshing citation in her Worl/LO document.
If yes then it seems that she did not change the item in Zotero, but deleted it and created a new one. In her Word/LO document is still cited "deleted" item. She can try very easy test. Put the cursor on the citation in the note with "old" data, click on the edit citation button, click on the citation and click on the Open in my Library button.

C Schel87

Thanks, you got the question right (sorry if my formulation was somewhat unclear), and this a very helpful answer. I wasn't sure what happens to data in notes in a document of which the parent record in the library is deleted.

bwiernik

A good practice to tell your student is that they should edit the data for an item, rather than making a new one and deleting the old. Also, they should be sure to merge duplicate items (select both, right-click, Merge Items), rather than deleting one. This will ensure that all cited items in Word documents remain connected to the library.

In their existing document, they should delete the broken citation and re-insert it. Zotero stores the data for all citations in the Word document, so citations to deleted items can still be rendered, but they won't reflect any changes to other library items and the data can't be edited.