Zotero fields deactivated

stnvcgc

I've seen this problem raised before numerous times (with no solution), and read the FAQ section here: https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/existing_citations_not_detected
But none of these apply to me. I've literally had my document sitting on my laptop for the last month, and when I last edited it, the fields worked fine. I haven't changed any versions, and I haven't turned the document into anything other than .docx. Now, in my Word document, the Zotero citations and Bibliography have all become plain text and I can no longer do anything with them. The only workaround is to manually replace all the plain text with new zotero citations, which is doable but a pain in the neck.
Please let me know if there's either an easier fix or (more importantly) a way to prevent losing these in future.
Thank you.

MbabazizeDoreen

I am experiencing the same problem, can someone help?

dstillman

@stnvcgc, @MbabazizeDoreen: I'm afraid there's really no other answer than what's on the linked page. Zotero citations are simply Word fields, and it's not really possible for those to become plain text unless 1) you save in the wrong format, 2) you open and save with another program, or 3) you manually unlink them, either using the plugin's Unlink Citations button or a shortcut in Word (Ctrl-Shift-F9/Cmd-Shift-F9) that does that. There's simply no code in Zotero that does this other than the code that runs when you press Unlink Citations.

adamsmith

Zotero fields are regular Word fields. If what you describe is an accurate description of what happens, and a document which you haven't changed in any way loses all field information, that would be a (quite massive) Word bug that would affect all reference managers and multiple other applications.

Given what we know about cases in which this has happened, I currently don't think that's a terribly likely explanation and I'd encourage you to describe in some more detail what you've done to troubleshoot and we can think through what might have happened (and that's definitely what I'd recommend for Doreen), but if you're 100% certain that no other explanation applies, you'd have to talk to Microsoft.