Citations unlinking in Google Docs

annahush

Hi there,

I am working on a PhD thesis with a separate Google Doc for each chapter, and using the Zotero plugin in Google Chrome on a Mac. When I copy text from one document to another, and also when I try to move text around within a document by copy-pasting, all the citations will become unlinked. On a small % of occasions it will work OK and the citations will be preserved, but I can't figure out why it only works sometimes. I have all my documents set up to use the same referencing system.

I have seen some previous comments saying that this is a known issue in Chrome. Are there any workarounds for this? I am really hoping I will be able to collate all my documents without having to manually go through and relink all the citations...

Thanks.

dstillman

Copying and pasting citations should work fine as long as you have the Zotero Connector installed and you see the Zotero menu in Google Docs. If the Connector isn't installed, they'll be unlinked.

When the Connector is active, you should see a brief overlay while pasting citations, as the Connector updates them to preserve their special state. If it pastes immediately without an overlay, something went wrong and they'll be unlinked.

annahush

Thanks for your response. The Zotero Connector is installed, the Zotero menu is visible, and there is always an overlay while pasting. This makes me think it is not an issue with the Connector being installed or inactive...

dstillman

If you see the overlay, the pasted citation shouldn't be unlinked, and I suspect you'll find that it's not.

annahush

I've double checked that the Connector is installed and active when I paste citations, and after seeing the overlay, they are unlinked.

I would appreciate any further suggestions for how to resolve this.

dstillman

Are you saying that if you insert a new citation, copy it, paste it, and press Refresh, it’s flagged as unlinked?

annahush

Yes. Oddly enough sometimes it doesn't unlink straight away, but after continuing work on the document and adding a few more citations, it will then become unlinked.

dstillman

No, it doesn’t work like that. If you press Refresh and it doesn’t show the citation as unlinked, it wasn’t unlinked by that action. I’m asking you to test my steps above and tell us whether you can actually reproduce this. If you can, we’d want to see a Debug ID from Zotero for that exact operation.