Google docs - citations spontaneously unlinking

paulbosma · December 7, 2020

@adomasven Ok, do you want the doc were I copy the text from, of were I copy the text to?

adomasven · December 7, 2020

The one from which you copy citations that are linked and refresh normally with Zotero

adomasven · December 8, 2020

@paulbosma The document that you shared with us contains no Zotero citations. You should use Zotero -> Refresh on the original document and make sure that all citations refresh correctly and you do not get notifications about unlinked citations, and also make sure that the citations in the text that you are copying are editable with Zotero. I.e. when you put the cursor in them an popover saying "Edit with Zotero" should appear.

paulbosma · December 16, 2020

@adomasven Ok, I have sent you the link to another document that has refreshed links to Zotero which will not work if you copy them to another doc file.

jmschmidt · December 21, 2020

Thank you to everyone who has tried to reproduce this problem. It has been so challenging for me that I have given up using zotero in google docs and moved to using Word. It's especially bad when I use a numbered reference format in the text, because once unlinked I only see the numbers (e.g., "4-7") and then have no idea what documents the references even refer to.

I do edit docs from two different machines under the same google account, but both browsers have the zotero connector installed. I too have noticed that if I leave a doc open for a few days that I return with a few, but not all, references unlinked. I will see if I can reproduce that.

dstillman · December 24, 2020

The latest version of the Zotero Connector, 5.0.77, attempts to address an additional cause of unlinking and also provide more immediate feedback when it occurs due to a Google Docs server issue. Let us know if you still encounter this.

paulbosma · December 28, 2020

Hi @adomasven, I haven't received a reaction from you. Did you take a look at the document I shared with you?

dstillman · December 28, 2020

@paulbosma: Read my previous comment.

adomasven · December 28, 2020

@paulbosma Yes, thanks! The document that you have shared with us was what helped to find this bug.

paulbosma · December 28, 2020

@adomasven Ok, awesome! I just tested it and it works if I keep the "offline editing" extension in chrome disabled. Thanks :)

devrajoy · February 20, 2021

Hi, I have come back to edit my google doc today and sadly am still experiencing the same problem. I reverted to a version right before unlinking happened, refreshed and all was well, enabled logging and restarted zotero, moved a segment of text with citations, and citations in moved text became unlinked. I think I did the steps correctly this time.
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adomasven · February 22, 2021

Dragging text is not supported with Zotero citations. We have no way to support that unfortunately. Copy-pasting should work fine though. If you're not dragging the text, please provide more information about how you got the citations to unlink.