Citation link disappeared, always used .docx on same computer, import bibliography from earlier docx

xxtraloud
Zotero or Word have struck again and I am left with no bibliography, I have no clue how this happened, the only thing I did was saving the docx with another file name. Then when I realized the citations because just text it was too late to go back to the previous version. I have no time to troubleshoot this so I need a quick solution. Why would this happen? It's totally unreliable.

Is there a way I can copy the bibliography from an older document version and import it into the new version? I have tried to copy the bibliography and then paste it but zotero doesnt recognize it, but I see it still contains the links.
  • adamsmith
    Are you actually sure the links are gone? How did you check?
  • xxtraloud
    Usually when the cursor is on the citation or bibliography it becomes grey, then a right click doesn't bring up edit/update/toggle field codes, so I am sure it's only text.
  • adamsmith
    You want to be extra sure here - Word has different settings for displaying fields that you may have accidentally changed. If you press alt+f9 (alt+fn+f9 on mac), do you not see any field codes? When you have the cursor inside a citation and try to add another zotero citation, it lets you insert a new citation, not modify the old one?

    If so, the best idea I have is to do compare documents with an old version of the document that still has working cite codes, merge anything new into the old doc, and then reinsert the citations for this new part. It's not great, but I'm afraid there's no better option.

    (As to why this happened, I have no idea. It's supposed to be literally impossible on both the zotero and the Word side. The known reasons this would happen are removing field codes in zotero, removing field codes in Word, saving in an unsupported format, or opening with non-Word software)
  • xxtraloud
    I have also checked with alt-F9, there are no codes.

    The only thing I can think of was a Word update, but I don't see how that would affect the filed codes because it didn't affect any other file.
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