Besides what DWL-SDCA asks above...

I get the message from Zotero saying that I have modified this citation

Have you modified the citations manually? (i.e. you edited them in the document after they were inserted)

This is very troubling, as I cannot, cannot, cannot, I repeat, CANNOT, have my cites jumbled in my dissertation.

So if you do allow Zotero to replace your "modified" citations (in a copy of your document. KEEP BACKUPS!), what happens? Does it actually jumble them up?

I did edit them manually. I am using the latest version of Zotero. I cite very liberally, and do not have the time or the inclination to go back and chnage my manual changes. Technology should save time, not waste it.

That's OK, but why does Zotero go back, MONTHS later, to ask about citations that were NOT manually edited, and then proceed to go through EVERY citation separately, FROM PAGE 1 OF THE DOCUMENT? I have MANY, MANY references. Is there a way to fix this?

When I add an entirely new entry, its fine. But when I cite to a previously cited one, every 2nd cite or so, I get the "request for modification" message, going back to page 1, footnote 1, and asking this question of every single citation, making some changes along the way. These include many in which I have made NO manual change. I have no way at this point of going back, as I have 120 footnotes, with text, in 39 pages of document so far. As you can see, I footnote extensively, and cannot have Zotero act in this way--it is beyond "frustrating." I am using the latest zotero and plug-in for word for mac 2011 and the latest OSX (Yosemite 10.10.4). Indeed, while I have experienced this crazy behavior in the past on odd occasions, I now experience almost every time since your latest update. Obviously, there is something VERY wrong here that requires attention.

I will also be sure to warn my graduate student colleagues to avoid using Zotero until this mess is resolved.

Also, as a thought, are you tracking changes in the document in Word? Shouldn't make a difference, but it might.

Can you post a sample citation here that you have not edited manually, but that is issuing a "request for modification" notice? The plain text form will do, no need to replicate the formatting.

There is a reason behind the request. Zotero embeds the "plain" (unformatted) version of a cite in the document, and compares the generated "plain" reference with it. For some character sets, there are multiple ways of representing characters in Unicode. This creates problems for search, and Zotero recently moved to normalize the encoding of such characters. I am thinking that there is a possibility that a discrepancy between the encoding of the "plain" version of a cite embedded in the document, and that of the generated "plain" version of the cite might cause this behaviour. That intuition might be wrong—the purpose of the question above is to gauge whether it is worth pursuing.

@fbennett

Zotero embeds the "plain" (unformatted) version of a cite in the document, and compares the generated "plain" reference with it

Looking at Zotero code, it doesn't seem like that's what it's doing. My understanding is that before it attempts to re-generate the citation, it compares the text that is visible in Word to the text that Zotero stored previously when it generated the citation last time. So this would not be affected by any changes in Zotero citation generation, but only by edits in the actual citation.

And ttulcin and jgentzke, please skip the melodramatic threats when posting here. People are here volunteering their time to help you because they'd like to address your issue — which obviously most Zotero users aren't experiencing, or else the forums would be flooded with complaints — so just focus on the problem you're facing and work with them to debug it.

https://www.zotero.org/support/forum_guidelines#etiquette

I am having the same problem as @jgentzke and @ttulcin. Was this resolved at all because I am getting the same prompt and regardless of whether I click yes or no, Zotero modifies my citations. They do not look different in My Library so I cannot go back and modify them but when I go to insert them they will appear differently [ex: Instead of (Ettinger 2006, 45) Zotero will insert (B.L. Ettinger 2006- I do not want the B.L.).

Is there a way to reverse or edit this for all of them instead of having to change them every time I insert a citation in Word?

Thanks for your time.

I have also experienced something similar. I use Zotero stand-alone for Mac. Yesterday I went back to a large, completed document to modify it. Whenever I attempt to add a new Zotero citation or edit an existing one, Zotero prompts me with the dialogue box asking if I want to keep my modifications of a citation. But it asks me this regarding a citation box that does not contain the same work that I was trying to add. After answering (either yes or no), it goes to the next citation, and keeps repeating this process for some time (whether the answer is yes or no) until it finally stops somewhere well into the document and the following error box appears:

Zotero experienced an error updating your document.

Document modified during update @[setCode:field.m:585]

This is not occurring with other previous documents I have used Zotero with, and did not happen with this one either when I originally composed it. Usually, when I add a citation of a particular work that I had already cited elsewhere in the document and added annotations, the dialogue box would only appear for citations that included the particular work that I was now adding or editing. That was easy enough to manage as I could copy/past my annotations and then tell Zotero to erase them so that my citation would be updated in the future and then paste the annotations back in. But now, I have to decide answer yes or no to 20-30 or more citations before the error box appears, and this repeats every time I add or edit a citation in the document without in the end allowing me to add the citation I was originally trying to add. This effectively means that I cannot modify this document at all. I have tried on previously saved files of the same document and the same problem occurs. I would appreciate any help since otherwise I will have to re-enter everything in a new file. Thanks.

Hello, I am having the same problem with the "modified citations" message coming up with some (not all) citations that I try to insert in a document, and then nothing happens when I click either Yes or No. I have to force-quit in the Task Manager and restart Zotero each time before I can insert a different citation.

There is nothing different about the citations that give me this message and the ones that do not.

I did just re-set the Doc Prefs for this document a few days ago, changing it from Chicago style to Vancouver. I have never had this problem in Harvard or Chicago styles.

I use Zotero Standalone for Firefox, have the latest version, and am using it on a Word Doc on a PC.

Any advice on how to make this stop would be much appreciated! I am updating references on the final version of an article manuscript due to the publisher by Sunday, and this is driving me nuts...

THANKS!

Yes, not in the citations specifically but elsewhere in the document -- but I always do in drafts, and it has never caused a problem with other citation formats in Zotero.

Thank you! That helped. Still happens some, but not as much.

Hi.
I am having the same problem as others have described here. I have an 87 pages document with over 200 citations. When this was first happening, I went back and corrected each one that it changed. It is getting worse as it is going through more and more citations. I have not changed citation style. I have not done anything differently. I have tracked changes, but since reading the previous posts, I have accepted all changes and it is still happening. Please help.

I am using Zotero plug in on Word for MAC. I also have Zotero stand alone.

Thank you