HELP! "You must insert a citation before performing this operation"

Katrin75

Hi. I am getting a bit desperate here. Never had any issues with inserting/updating the bibliography of my thesis. But now it just doesn't work at all. I've tried upgrading etc. but no help.
Whenever I click "Add/edit bibliography", Zotero won't let me do anything. I just get the message "You must insert a citation before performing this operation".
But I am NOT trying to cite anything, just adding to the bibliography.
What on earth should I do now?
I also tried to do this in a brand new document, same problem there.

dstillman

https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/existing_citations_not_detected

Katrin75

Thanks but this still doesn't help.
Even in a brand new document I can't insert any bibliography.
It just keeps giving me the "you must insert a citation before performing this operation".
And I am NOT trying to insert a citation :(

dstillman

You can't insert a bibliography in a new document until you insert a citation. The whole point of a Zotero bibliography is that it's generated automatically from the citations in the document.

So if you're getting it in an existing document where you've previously inserted citations, it means something happened to the document, as explained on the linked page.

Martin Johnson

Hi - I also get this error message when trying to add a citation to a new document (.docx) from the keyboard shortcut, but it works fine when I add it from the toolbar command tab. Seems strange?

dstillman

Martin: What do you mean by the "toolbar command tab"? What exactly are you clicking?

To be clear, you would get this when triggering Add/Edit Bibliography without inserting a citation. So if that's the command that you set the shortcut key for, this is expected if you don't have active citations in the document.