All citations are unlinked in Google docs (Chrome)

smbrander

How do I get citations that are unlinked back? This is a 45 page document that had 4 people working on it, 100s of citations have been unlinked and I don't know why or how to fix it. This is my first experience with Zotero, I've used Endnote before for years and never had a problem like this.

Frustrated in Oregon.

smbrander

Another weird thing is that some of the previously linked citations are highlighted in yellow, and some are red text. Is that because people are using different browsers to work on the document? I was told Zotero was supposed to work well in shared documents but now I'm looking at days of work to recite everything.

dstillman

Just to be clear, you're saying you got the warning from Zotero in the top-right corner of the Google Docs page that citations were unlinked, and they turned red in the document? (On Twitter you mentioned downloading the document to Word. That would definitely unlink all citations if you didn't do the extra transfer step.)

See this page to understand how this would happen in Google Docs. If you're collaborating with people, the most likely cause would be someone else without the Zotero Connector installed making changes to parts of the document with the citations. (This isn't a problem when using the Word or LibreOffice plugins, but it's a technical limitation with Google Docs.)

Note that the warning appears after the problem occurred, so the fact that you saw it wouldn't be relevant. It would be some operation on the document — likely by someone else — between the last time you interacted with the document and when you got the message.

Since this is Google Docs, you should be able to use the Google Docs version history to revert to an earlier version of the document from before the problem occurred — you can revert to different spots and do a Refresh to see if the warning appears, and try an earlier spot if so. Once you find a version where the citations are intact, you should make a copy of the document, and then you may need to reapply more recent changes.

Another weird thing is that some of the previously linked citations are highlighted in yellow

Not sure what you mean by that. Can you take a screenshot, upload it somewhere (e.g., Dropbox or Google Drive), and provide a link here? Zotero doesn't turn anything yellow, so that sounds like something someone else did.

smbrander

I really don't know how to answer these questions. This is my first time using Zotero, I was told it worked well in Google Docs. I don't recall ever seeing a warning? We've been working together on this document for months and gradually adding citations as we go. They were either highlighted (I didn't do this, showed up for others) or in red. I think at this point there is no fixing it. I'm just very frustrated because there was no indication until I tried to create the bibliography that something was wrong. I don't really trust this program now.

smbrander

I've used Endnote for like 10 yrs (since starting grad school) and switched to Zotero last year. Endnote had a helpline, but of course this is freeware so that isn't a thing understandably.

smbrander

I'm just a tired academic and parent 20 months into a pandemic, and just want something to be easy. Alas.

dstillman

When Zotero detects unlinked citations in a Google Doc, it will show a warning and color them in red. Again, the most likely cause of this would be someone interacting with the document without the Zotero Connector installed. As I say, this wouldn't be an issue with Zotero's Word or LibreOffice plugins — it's a technical limitation when using Google Docs, that everyone have the Zotero Connector installed when interacting with the document. EndNote doesn't have a Google Docs plugin, so there's nothing comparable there.

I think at this point there is no fixing it.

I don't know why you'd decide that without checking the version history. Unlinked citations would turn red the first time someone with the Zotero Connector tried to interact with the document after they got unlinked, so it shouldn't have been that long ago, unless you've been ignoring red citations in the document.

Endnote had a helpline, but of course this is freeware so that isn't a thing understandably.

I mean, I'm the lead developer of Zotero and I responded to you within a couple minutes late on a Friday night of a holiday weekend. If that seems like an unreasonable level of support to you, I don't know what to tell you.

smbrander

I'm just trying to write a review paper. Thank you for responding quickly but frankly now I just feel like a moron. I'm a first time user and was trying my best. I really need to be able to call someone to walk through this. I don't know how to fix it myself. I didn't know the citations turning red meant anything, I thought that was just showing they were linked. There was no warning message. I guess I know for the future.

dstillman

The warning message will appear for the first Zotero user who interacts with the document after the citations became unlinked, and that's also the point at which the citations will be turned red. Newly inserted citations are always black, so even if you miss the warning it should be pretty clear that something is wrong.

I don't know how to fix it myself.

I've said what you can do — use the Google Docs version history. If there's something we say here or in the documentation that you don't understand, quote it and say exactly what you don't understand about it. I understand you're frustrated, but we really can help you if you're willing to engage with us a bit — we help thousands of people a year in these forums, quite effectively.

If a large number of citations have been red for a while, you may indeed need to reinsert those, since the document has likely changed significantly since then. But anything newer should still be in black, unless one of your collaborators has been regularly interacting with the document without the Zotero Connector installed and breaking citations (but that would again trigger the warning, each time it happened).

dstillman

Actually, if there are unlinked citations in the document, the warning message reappears in the top-right corner of Google Docs every time you interact with the Zotero plugin. So if you haven't noticed it, there's a good chance the citations weren't unlinked until recently, and you should be able to find a recent version where the citations are active.

smbrander

Well, looking through the doc, all of the citations I thought were linked, are red. Nothing is black. I didn't receive a warning, but I have Zotero Connector. I think trying to figure out when in the past 6 months this happened would be more work than just reciting everything. And the next time I work in a collaborative Google doc (which nowadays I do more than I work in Word) I will ask everyone to install Zotero Connector at the beginning. It would be nice if the warning messages came to everyone in the document somehow and were more obvious, that way I would have known something was wrong. I think someone must have been in the doc regularly without the connector app and just didn't know they were doing anything incorrectly. Thank you for your help.

dstillman

The warning will appear if there are unlinked citations any time anyone uses the plugin on the document (e.g., to insert a citation). So it really shouldn’t be possible to work on the document for a long time without noticing this, and I’d strongly encourage you to check some recent versions to see if this happened recently.

We’re not able show a message if someone doesn’t have the Zotero Connector installed at all, but if someone is inserting citations, this should be hard to miss.