Some references consistently show as plain text, followed by field code

wvdvegte

I have the weird problem that some items in my library, when referenced, always appear in my Word documents as plain text, with the field code inserted after it.

It's like this:
(Bargas-Avila & Hornbæk, 2011){ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"EgDQCasq","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Bargas-Avila & Hornb\\uc0\\u230{}k, 2011)","plainCitation":"","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":120,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/1829159/items/KWBUTTHP"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/1829159/items/KWBUTTHP"],"itemData":{"id":120,"type":"paper-conference","title":"Old wine in new bottles or novel challenges: a critical analysis of empirical studies of user experience","publisher":"ACM","page":"2689-2698","event":"Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems","ISBN":"1-4503-0228-9","shortTitle":"Old wine in new bottles or novel challenges: a critical analysis of empirical studies of user experience","author":[{"family":"Bargas-Avila","given":"Javier A"},{"family":"Hornbæk","given":"Kasper"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2011"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} }

When I select Refresh, nothing happens - that is unless I modify the contents of the entry in my library, in which case an updated version of the reference, again in plain text, is inserted after the original plain text.

I tried everything that is mentioned under "Citations converted to plain text" in the troubleshooting documentation, but to no avail. Could it be that the corresponding entries in my library are corrupted? Any other ideas? Thanks in advance for your help.

Edit: I have this problem only with some of the entries in my library - most behave as they should, i.e., the formatted reference appears inside the field code.

BTW I'm using Zotero Standalone 5.0.52 (latest version) for Mac with MS Word 2016.

Wilfred

adamsmith

How odd. Could you try if you make a copy of that reference if that's still the case? If so, if you change Hornbæk to Hornbaek, any change?

wvdvegte

I could not reproduce the insertion of another plain-text reference after the previous one. But what's happening is still odd indeed.

I created a document with just this one reference, and a bibliography. It looks like this:

(Bargas-Avila & Hornbæk, 2011){ ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"y1Bl2jk5","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Bargas-Avila & Hornb\\uc0\\u230{}k, 2011)","plainCitation":"","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":120,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/1829159/items/KWBUTTHP"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/1829159/items/KWBUTTHP"],"itemData":{"id":120,"type":"paper-conference","title":"Old wine in new bottles or novel challenges: a critical analysis of empirical studies of user experience","publisher":"ACM","page":"2689-2698","event":"Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems","ISBN":"1-4503-0228-9","shortTitle":"Old wine in new bottles or novel challenges: a critical analysis of empirical studies of user experience","author":[{"family":"Bargas-Avila","given":"Javier A"},{"family":"Hornbæk","given":"Kasper"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2011"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} }

Bargas-Avila, J. A., & Hornbæk, K. (2011). Old wine in new bottles or novel challenges: a critical analysis of empirical studies of user experience (pp. 2689–2698). Presented at the Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM.{ ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY }

Note that the bibliography, too, is plain text followed by a field code.

After changing Hornbæk to Hornbaek in my library and pressing Refresh, it becomes this:

(Bargas-Avila & Hornbæk, 2011){ ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"y1Bl2jk5","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Bargas-Avila & Hornbaek, 2011)","plainCitation":"(Bargas-Avila & Hornbaek, 2011)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":120,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/1829159/items/KWBUTTHP"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/1829159/items/KWBUTTHP"],"itemData":{"id":120,"type":"paper-conference","title":"Old wine in new bottles or novel challenges: a critical analysis of empirical studies of user experience","publisher":"ACM","page":"2689-2698","event":"Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems","ISBN":"1-4503-0228-9","shortTitle":"Old wine in new bottles or novel challenges: a critical analysis of empirical studies of user experience","author":[{"family":"Bargas-Avila","given":"Javier A"},{"family":"Hornbaek","given":"Kasper"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2011"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} }

Bargas-Avila, J. A., & Hornbæk, K. (2011). Old wine in new bottles or novel challenges: a critical analysis of empirical studies of user experience (pp. 2689–2698). Presented at the Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM.

So the reference text is not updated - only the field code, which is normally invisible. Nor is the bibliography updated, and its field code is deleted....

wvdvegte

... and in a new document, after the change of Hornbæk into Hornbaek, the reference displays correctly - everything inside the field code. So it might be the æ character. I will check whether all my problem items have special characters ...

Edit: Yes, it seems to be consistently happening with names that contain special characters. I could reproduce it with Létourneau, Koç and Söderberg

wvdvegte

I don't know if it's the correct way to do this, but I created an error report and submitted it as a new thread with a more accurate problem description "Report ID: 936427847 - Author names with special characters result in dysfunctional field codes", https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/72661/report-id-936427847-author-names-with-special-characters-result-in-dysfunctional-field-codes#latest

adomasven

Let's keep the discussion in this thread. Go into Zotero Preferences -> Cite -> Word Processors and (re)install the Word plugin. With the Word 16.9 update from Microsoft, the Zotero plugin was broken and for users who had moved Zotero profiles or installed the plugin manually before, the update would have not gone through. You will need to manually remove and re-add these broken citations, which should work fine after the plugin reinstallation.

wvdvegte

Thanks for the suggestion. For some reason I had to reinstall twice but it worked!