How do I completely unlink Zotero from citations?

rafkaz

Hi all. I am editing my dissertation at the moment and while I used Zotero through my dissertation, it has created significant problems in my corrections stage because of the "unknown - field code changed" problem. I have tried everything said on this forum and troubleshooting but no matter what I do - EVEN when track changes is off - it reverts back to making every citation a field code changed. Even when I pressed the unlink citations and had track changes off and all the field code changed balloons are gone, it eventually comes back. I just want to make it so every citation is seen completely as plain text and unfortunately I will just enter citations manually. This is quite disappointing because I liked using Zotero but the idea of rejecting thousands of citations field code changes only for it to possibly happen again is really demoralising. Thanks for any help.

dstillman

Unlinking citations unlinks them. If you do something with track changes — and I don't know exactly what that would be — that reverts to previous state, they'll obviously come back, but there's nothing we can do about that. Unlink Citations literally just turns them into flat text.

dstillman

I would guess that, despite having Track Changes off when unlinking, you still had changes that you hadn't accepted, and the changed text included active citations. So when you later accepted those changes, you restored the active citations from before the unlinking.

rafkaz

I went back to my original document with no tracked changes and it still happened. I also checked and even after unlinking citations it still appears as a field code and not plain text so not sure what's happening there

dstillman

even after unlinking citations it still appears as a field code

You're saying you have a document with active Zotero citations, you're clicking Unlink Citations, and immediately after they're still field codes?

If so, can you 1) provide a Report ID after it occurs and 2) send a pre-unlinked snippet of the document in which you can reproduce that to support@zotero.org, with a link to this thread?

You can also see how this should be working in a new document. Create a new document, insert a citation, and click Unlink Citations. Unless there's something very wrong with your installation, the citation will have been converted to flat text.

rafkaz

I just tried it in a new document and it made it flat text. My document is very big though, do you think that could be an issue? If it doesn't work now I'll do a report, thanks

rafkaz

Yep, it just took about half an hour for it to happen! Thanks for all your help

Stephanie Richards

Hello, I am having the same problem that I click "unlink citations" and the links are all still there in my Word document footnotes. I tried it in a new document, as rafkaz mentioned above, and it seemed to work on some, but not all, which seems extremely strange.

dstillman

Stephanie: How are you determining that the citations are still linked?

If you can reproduce this in a new document, can you generate a Debug ID for attempting to unlink citations and email the resulting document to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread?

jabishop

Hi All,
I was just dealing with this same unlinking problem. I was able to finally unlink my citations after I quit and restarted Zotero. Hope your problem is as easy to fix.