Zotero not recognizing prior bibliography in Word document

ojasmojas
edited March 16, 2017
I'm using Word on Mac and have to send my work to collaborators. Somewhere along the way (maybe because I saved in compatibility mode as .doc?) Zotero no longer recognizes the bibliography it had created. I have to add a few more references, can I somehow "re-connect" the bibliography to Zotero?

As of now if I add any references it will mark it as "1" and I will have to insert another bibliography.
  • adomasven
    Do you use Zotero document preferences do you use Fields or Bookmarks? Bookmarks are (as noted in the description) much more error-prone and while this is rare, an edit in a different software, especially LibreOffice might break the connection.

    Your best bet is to work from a backup where the connection with Word was still functional and re-incorporate the changes from your colleagues.

    If you need to use bookmarks, but the connection seems to be lost when your colleagues edit the file, then you could try refreshing the bookmarks in a document which hasn't lost the connection to Zotero by changing the document to use Fields, saving as docx, then copying the contents of the document into a fresh file, switching back to bookmarks and saving as .doc again.
  • ojasmojas
    edited March 16, 2017
    I use Fields. I wonder if using Bookmarks would have actually been more helpful if we are sending it back and forth for edits?
    EDIT: Please note that the other people are not altering references just other parts of the document.
  • adomasven
    Oh. If you use Fields and they edited/reviewed using LibreOffice, then that's certainly what went wrong, as saving with LibreOffice would have lost those.
  • adamsmith
    (LibreOffice or any other non-Word software, really -- google docs, pages, etc.)
  • ojasmojas
    Hmm, everyone else uses word. One time I did open it as a google doc and that probably shattered everything. Tragic!
  • Gurdas_Sandhu
    Just for my clarity: Why would going from Word to LibreOffice break things when LO has a processor plug-in? Further, if everyone editing a document is using LO, then that's not a problem, right?
  • adamsmith
    edited March 16, 2017
    because LibreOffice doesn't recognize Word Fields (nor does Word recognize LibreOffice Reference Marks)

    Edit: so yes, as long as everyone is either in Word or everyone is in LibreOffice, there is no problem at all. If you have a mixed team, you need to use Bookmarks (under Set Document Preferences), which are unfortunately quite fragile -- i.e. they can become corrupted through manual edits very easily.
  • Gurdas_Sandhu
    edited March 16, 2017
    Thanks, that helps. I used OpenOffice extensively 10 years ago, but haven't used LibreOffice (LO). I know LO is the true child of OpenOffice :) The fact that they do not cross-recognize fields (obviously, nothing to do with Zotero) is rather unfortunate. I would expect LO to have that capability given that it is open source and trying to battle Word.

    Is this mentioned in Zotero documentation? Might be worth it to warn users.
  • adamsmith
    It's mentioned in the Document Preferences (which you come across automatically when selecting your citation style). We're talking about making the text there more concise so it'd stand out more.

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