Zotero experienced an error updating your document. this.registry.citationreg.citationById[c[0]] is

chicaeclectica

I keep getting this error message when cutting and pasting from another Word document. Once this happens, I can't insert any citations, which effectively ruins the document. I am using Zotero Standalone on a Macbook Pro with MacOS High Sierra.

I suspect the problem is that there is a conflict between the citations in the old and new documents. If so, it would be great to be able to identify the broken citation so that I can just delete it, rather than reverting back to older versions of the paper and reentering all the changes without the citations, which is a huge amount of work. Please help!

adamsmith

Chickest way to find out is probably https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_troubleshooting#debugging_broken_documents

We'd be interested in seeing the broken citation though (the message suggests a Zotero bug), so if you're able to identify a short portion of the document with this broken, please send it to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread.

chicaeclectica

Thanks for your quick response! I think it was a bug since I was unable to isolate a broken citation (and, believe me, I tried by deleting the 30-page document section by section). The good news is that two of the debugging solutions appear to have worked: (1) pasting the entire document into a new file with a new style; and (2) in the original document, selecting a different style and then changing it back, although any new citations now have a dotted line under them until I do a refresh.

This problem occurs fairly often, so it would be great if Zotero could find a more permanent solution.

fbennett

The developers will need steps to reproduce it in order to fix it. If you can identify steps that reliably trigger the error for you, please report back.

fbennett

@chicaeclectica Oops, I may have misinterpreted the final sentence of your note above.

This problem occurs fairly often, so it would be great if Zotero could find a more permanent solution.

Rereading, I think you might have been referring to the appearance and behavior of underlined citations:

... any new citations now have a dotted line under them until I do a refresh.

If so, that's a feature. (You will have opted into it for the affected document, and you can opt back out by restoring the original setting.)