Library data and cit style not updated into Word document

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  • adamsmith
    well, I didn't know you had thrown out the old library, correct.
    Strange thing is that when I make a new citation in the old doc, citing the same titles, you'd think it uses the new URIs and gets it right. The resulting URIs are:
    "uri":["http://zotero.org/users/1540390/items/DPKJ432R"]
    if you cite an item that's listed under "Cited" in the word add-on, Zotero re-uses the item that already exists in the document. You can check that if you scroll further down in the search results and select the item that's under the group's name, it will insert that (with the group URI).
  • hanzhuef
    If the original library is lost, do you think recreating all citations (around 1,500 of them between the 5 seperate documents) from the group library, avoiding the "cited" ones, is the only way to get it going?
    Also, this does explain way data changes aren't pushed into the document, but style changes still should, shouldn't they?
  • hanzhuef
    (And damn, somewhere in the forum, I read that groups are the best way to sync a library. Apparently, they aren't)
  • adamsmith
    groups are the best way to collaborate when you use them from the start, but no, not to work on a document later on.
    If the original library is lost, do you think recreating all citations (around 1,500 of them between the 5 seperate documents) from the group library, avoiding the "cited" ones, is the only way to get it going?
    if you need all of them to update from the Zotero data then yes. But if that's not the case and you only need to fix the data for some, I'd just re-insert those.
    style changes still should, shouldn't they?
    correct.
  • hanzhuef
    ad1: Hard to say which ones would need to update to the group lib data.

    ad2: So there's a different reason for style changes not updating in my document. Do you have another idea that that could be? If not, I'd have to think about getting rid of Zotero and doing all the citation shizzle manually right now, or else I won't get this done in time.
  • adamsmith
    items manually modified in Word directly may not take _any_ style changes anymore. There would typically be a dialog prompting the user to choose the desired behavior (overwrite changes or stop updating)
    You can test that by switching to a completely different citation style (like one of the Harvard styles or so). If the citations don't change, that's what's going on.
  • hanzhuef
    edited October 27, 2015
    That I know. Not the case. I always get the dialog and click yes. And, not all of them have been manipulated in Word.
    The new situation is, it doesn't even give me the dialog.
    Plus, like I said, if I create a new citation, using the same titles as the one I want to replace (from "cited" or from database shouldn't matter here, I guess), I still don't get the new style.
    So basically my style doesn't reach the document full stop. Do you know anything about that?
  • adamsmith
    and it does in a new document? and you've tried switching to a different style and back?
    What are two example of different outcomes?
  • hanzhuef
    I got it. The style is actually up to date and what looks like the old style is actually stupid stuff in the old data. The page range that keeps showing up is hard-coded in the title-short in the old data that I can't change anymore, while having put hours into cleaning and organising the data AFTER we created the group (which is why a restore from the trash wouldn't be helfpul either)

    So before I set out to replace all or most of these craploads of citations, are you sure there isn't a workaround for this?
    I mean, different URIs is kind of a big one, I get that. Sounds like only a pretty intelligent script could get this straight.
  • hanzhuef
    What would you think about pairing the two respective URIs of the most used titles and search-and-replacing them in Word with code view (alt-F9) open? Too messy?
  • adamsmith
    edited October 27, 2015
    yeah, that's the best semi-automatic workflow and I think it'd work. Make sure that you search&replace the uri string, not the JSON value pair (don't worry if that's too jargony, example to follow), i.e.
    http://zotero.org/users/1540390/items/DPKJ432R
    rather than
    "uri":["http://zotero.org/users/1540390/items/DPKJ432R

    URIs appear twice, once in a uri, once in a uris field.

    Obviously do this in a copy of the document and save often and in incremental versions, but I'd be pretty confident this will work.

    A fully scripted version, on the other hand, would take you more time to write than it would take you to replace 1000 citations by hand. (You'd probably want to do that in python which has a library that can read local Zotero databases, then select a sufficient number of fields to make sure you're talking about the same item,
    read in the .docx file, find the URIs in question, query the Zotero database with the respective fields and run a search &replace in the docx. It's possible, but even if you're quite good at this, the time it'd take you to familiarize yourself with docx and the Zotero db structure would be substantial)
    then read in the
  • hanzhuef
    edited October 27, 2015
    [deleted]
  • hanzhuef
    edited October 27, 2015
    Oh, I think what you said was I should replace only the uri, starting with http: and ending with the item number. Correct?
    And is there a quicker way to find out the item number other than code view in Word?
  • adamsmith
    correct.

    And for the new items, this may be useful
    https://zoteromusings.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/zotero-item-uris-from-client/

    for the old items Word is your only option obviously, since they don't exist anywhere else.
  • hanzhuef
    Thank you very much, again. And now we have this monstrous thing of a support chat right in the feature request section... :-)
  • adamsmith
    (you can change the subject and the category of the thread by editing your first post)
  • hanzhuef
    edited October 27, 2015
    One more idea: Couldn't I press the "remove codes" button and then try an RTF scan? I'd have to change the style into {Author, Year} first. Can the rtf scan give me footnotes in the output file?
  • adamsmith
    I don't think that would work well enough, especially if there are any suffix/prefixes in the document. (not sure about the footnotes, would have to test myself)
  • hanzhuef
    edited October 27, 2015
    One other thing that I can't solve. My current style gives me the page variable when there's no citation locator. It works fine except the locator has a little flaw now:

    In visual editor and test pane, it's correct, but in Word, it gives me a double space in the citation locator between S. (page label) and locator number. For real! "S. 23" in a locator. And only with pages, not with other types of locators. And it's nowhere in the prefixes or suffixes. And it's no manual space in the locator field.

    The code:
    https://gist.github.com/anonymous/5b7c57708ad2bde141dc#file-tu-darmstadt-csl

    It's not the worst thing because I can search-and-replace all double spaces with a single one after everything is done. But as far as I can see, this is a case of different behavior of the same style in test pane vs. Word.

    I hope I can get off your back after this.
  • adamsmith
    You do have an extra space manually inserted for your definition of the page term that would be missing for all other locators, so that explains why it only applies to pages.

    But that would cause no space for all other locators and a single space in Word (and that's what you should be seeing in the test pane). Are you positive there is no extra space in the locator field? That's the only way I can replicate that in Word here.
  • hanzhuef
    Yes, I can be sure because it's in all citations that have a page locator.
    And I do get, as you said, "no space for all other locators and a single space in Word".
    So after removing the space in the term definition, where do I insert one? Locator label suffix?
  • adamsmith
    yes, locator label suffix is safe.

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