Citations won't properly update in a long document

jennyknox10

Hi,

I am having trouble getting my citations to update correctly. I copied and pasted several documents together into a long document. The citations correctly re-numbered, but when I used a source in two different original sections the long form of the citation has been retained in both cases in spite of various "refreshing" of my citations.
I have even tried deleting the second usage of the original text and then re-adding the footnote with the correct page number- the citation number is again correct, but the long form is still used. I even save the document after deleting the citation before reinserting without the problem being solved.

I have a word count requirement on the document and need to save words but using the short form of the citation every time after the first use.

Thoughts?

adomasven

What citation style are you using? Can you reproduce this in a new document?

jennyknox10

I have tried using both Turabian 8th ed and Chicago 17th. I originally had all the sections in Turabian and copied and pasted them into one doc, still in Turabian. I added a new citation to make sure it was synching with Zotero after I created the new doc. I then changed the document preferences to Chicago to see if it would help, it didn't so I changed it back.

The I tried copy and pasting the whole thing into a new document, setting the preference to Turabian, adding one citation so it was connected to zotero and the "refreshing" my citations. Again they did not update to use the short form after first usage.

adomasven

Can you reproduce this in a new doc by inserting the same citation? If not, try removing both citations and reinserting in the doc you're working on.

jennyknox10

I'm not sure what you mean by "inserting the same citation in a new document"

adomasven

Sorry, I meant to ask whether you can reproduce the issue by inserting the item that is causing you trouble twice in a new document?

jennyknox10

Ahh I understand- no, when I do that the section citation is properly abbreviated to "ibid"

Deleting both and reinserting them seemed to solve the problem for that author/work

But I have over 800 citations in my document and I would rather not check every individual work to make sure it was properly when it is used a second time... do you have any thoughts about that?

adomasven

This would happen if you had a duplicate of the item in your library and cited both of the duplicate items, or if you had removed the item from your library and then re-added it, in which case the original citation would have lost the connection with the deleted item. Your best bet is to insert a bibliography and check whether you have any duplicates in there. If you do you will need to reinsert the duplicated items in your document to ensure that only one item from your library corresponds to the citations in your doc.

jennyknox10

Great! Thanks