Highlighted citation no longer exists

obrienak
Hi,
I realise this has been discussed before, but the other solutions don't seem to be working for me. I use desktop Zotero version 5. Every time I try to create a citation, edit a citation or add a bibliography I get this message:
The highlighted citation no longer exists in your Zotero database. Do you want to select a substitute item?
This happens even though the citation in question is still in my database. If I click yes and select a substitute item, the same error message just comes up again. If I click no the entire citation is erased.
My Zotero storage is full - could this be affecting how it's functioning?
If there are some "bad" references corrupting my document, how do I find these and get rid of them? It's a 23,000 word document and I can't afford to go through them one by one!
Any help would be incredibly appreciated.
Thanks,
Ailbhe
  • bwiernik
    The most likely cause of this message is if you had duplicate items and you deleted one rather than merging them.

    (Online storage has nothing to do with your local Zotero library, so that’s not an issue here.)
  • obrienak
    Thanks for the reply. I use the merge function regularly so I think this is unlikely. In addition it even happens for key papers that I would be unlikely to forget I have previously saved to Zotero.
    If this was the case, would substitution not fix it?
  • bwiernik
    Actually, now that I think about it. This text is no longer part of Zotero, so it sounds like you are running a very old version. What version number of Zotero are you running?
  • obrienak
    5.0.74, which I thought was fairly up to date. I certainly can't find that check box that is mentioned in these threads a lot to "save data in document".
  • bwiernik
    Yes, that check box was removed when the data started to always be embedded (when that text was also removed). If you open the Tools -> Add-ons window in Zotero, what version does it give you for the Word plugin?

    Is this a very old document where you might have previously had that checkbox unchecked? If you right click on one of the affected citations and choose Toggle Field Codes, does it show you all the item data.
  • obrienak
    "Zotero Word for Windows Integration 5.0.14.SA.5.0.74 last updated August 27, 2019"

    The document was originally created a year ago and I regularly save it under a new name. When I right click a citation and choose Toggle Field Codes it shows a lot of information that seems correct.
  • bwiernik
    @adomasven I’m not sure where this message could be coming from.
  • adomasven
    @obrienak could you create create a chunk of text with a citation that produces this error into a new document, check if the error is still present there and if it is send it to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread?
  • obrienak
    Hi, so I'm away from the office at the moment, but I have the hard drive with all of the files producing errors so I went to get you the example. On my laptop, this problem doesn't seem to be happening. I find this surprising as zotero on my laptop only has a handful of references so definitely doesn't have all of the references contained within the document and yet there are no errors for it. I have added new ones, edited old ones and even put in the bibliography, all of which I couldn't do before. I did get one error message and it wasn't the same as before. It was "You have modified this citation since Zotero generated it. Do you want to keep your modifications and prevent future updates?". However, this only happened once. So does this mean that it's not the document itself that is corrupted, but the Zotero standalone on my PC? If so, how do I fix that? Uninstall and reinstall?

    The other issue is that there are a lot of incidences of the same reference being listed twice in the bibliography as separate references. I'm not sure how these can be amalgamated into the one single reference as there is only one source reference in the zotero database.
  • adomasven
    Reinstalling Zotero is probably a good place to start on your PC.

    As for references listed twice, the documents store a reference to the Zotero item that you have cited in the document, so if you cited the same item from a different Zotero library or deleted and resaved/reimported item, it will have a different ID and will not be considered the same item. Your best bet is to reinsert all the instances of that item in the document.
  • obrienak
    Thanks for the help. If I uninstall Zotero on the PC is there a way of saving my library so I can put it back on once Zotero is reinstalled?
  • bwiernik
    Uninstalling won’t remove your library, but if you want to be sure, make a backup of your Zotero data directory: https://Zotero.org/support/zotero_data
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