Zotero Unlinked Random Citations in GoogleDoc

Alleciajones

My capstone partner and I share a Zotero library, and we are working through Google Docs to write. We have experienced multiple issues with the document unlinking our sources previously and did problem shooting of changing our emails, re-downloading, unlinking and relinking, and have yet to find a solution to the most resent issue. Through the editing process we had various sources unlink and saw {updating} in place of our citations. We tried the following and have yet to figure out the issue. Duplicating the document, unlinking all the sources (half stayed linked), re-entering the links manually. Is there a way to help solve this issue because it still generated a bibliography but would not add new sources nor would it recognize so previous sources.

dstillman

The only known causes of this we're aware of are 1) someone without the Zotero Connector editing the document, 2) dragging text with a citation within the document, which unfortunately we're not able to detect and will causing unlinking, instead of using cut/paste, or 3) transferring or editing the file outside of Google Docs without using the transfer process.

Note that the point when it tells you the citations were unlinked isn't when they became unlinked — that would be earlier. You can almost certainly use the Google Docs version history to restore to a working version, but you need to go back to before the action that unlinked them, not simply the Refresh that showed the warning.

Alleciajones

Thank you for the quick reply!
We both have a connector, and I will contact them to verify we are not dragging. I know we are not editing outside the document so the second option seems the most likely. Thank you for those options.


Another thing I am wondering, since you noted that the links unlinked at another point in time, is it possible that the links became undone when it was duplicated? I duplicated the google document and changed the name, and used track changes to edit, but then like the webpage says accepted the track changes before returning to edit or use Zotero.

dstillman

is it possible that the links became undone when it was duplicated?

Via File → "Make a copy"? That should be fine. Somewhat more likely that Track Changes would cause a problem, though I don't believe we're aware of any specific problems. @adomasven may have other comments.

adomasven

If you copied and pasted the contents from old into a new document, Zotero citations may have failed to copy if the new document page had not been fully loaded yet (as Zotero waits for the Google Docs editor to fully load before adding its own functionality).