Are you using a numbered citation style? If not, adding a citation shouldn't change every field's field code, and if it does, that's a bug. If so, making a change to your document that changes the citation numbers will label every field. We could disable track changes when updating field codes, which would avoid this message, but it wouldn't be possible to revert changes to citations using tracked changes. I'm not entirely sure that this would be preferable.

I have the same issue. It doesn't affect working within the document, it's just an annoyance to have so many extra tracked changes and comments. I'll keep an eye open here for any solutions.

This annoyance has nothing to do with Zotero, rather it is caused by MS Word's "track changes" feature. It will only occur if you add a citation that has not already been cited in your document, which results in the citation numbers changing and causes word to identify these changes.

How I avoid the issue is by turning off MS Word's track changes feature prior to adding a citation. If I forgot to do so and I ended up with a ton of "Field Code Changed" instances, I simply undo my last action, turn off track changes, then repeat my citation addition.

Hope this helps

My apologies for saying this has nothing to do with Zotero so quickly. It obviously does, otherwise, the issue would not have been posted in this forum.

As I stated above, you should only notice this issue if you are adding a citation that has not been previously cited in your document. This is due to all future reference numbers increasing by one, which Word interprets as a change to the document. Since zotero's citation numbers are fields, this change is represented by a change to the field codes. I encounter the same issue due to an unrelated cause when I add or delete equations, which is also represented as a field code change.

Again, I have found that turning of "track changes" in Word's review functionality right before adding a new citation then turning it back on after is the best/only solution for this annoyance.

I'm encountering this problem right now. It doesn't happen consistently. In some documents, when Track Changes is on, adding a new citation causes 'field code changed' to be tracked on other citations. But in other documents, adding a new citation has no effect on other citations.

Has anyone got to the bottom of why this occurs?

In your post on another thread it appeared to me that you were complaining that when you entered a new reference (before the end of your document while using a numbered style such as Vancouver) and the reference numbers updated; you object to track changes marking the updated numbers being flagged as changes. Zotero will automatically update the manuscript to reflect the insertion of the new reference and the reference numbers will change. This change is a good thing.

I suppose that you are sharing your document with a colleague or a supervisor. The way I handle this is to always share a copy of my working document that has all field codes removed. I turn on track changes in the copy I forward to my colleague. That way the colleague / supervisor can make changes and comments without affecting my original work and I can then easily see the comments and incorporate them into my working copy.

Although I haven't verified this recently, this "problem" occurs with other bib management software (BMS) such as EndNote and Mandeley. The BMS is doing its job facilitating keeping track of citation number changes and the word processor is doing its job by marking the changes.

All my remarks notwithstanding, if there is a way to avoid these changes being flagged, I would be pleased to have a way around this.

Just accept the tracked change twice. What Word is doing is showing you the hidden field codes that Zotero changed. Simply look at the massive code as indicating "Zotero changed a reference".

(But track changes and field codes interact somewhat weirdly in Word. Field codes can be generally not shown, but if you are cycling through the tracked changes, Word will show one changes set of field codes at a time--showing you the changes codes for the highlighted field. Don't be alarmed, just click Accept twice to acccept the changed codes and continue as normal.)

(Please don’t post the same issue in multiple threads.)

When field codes pop up, click Accept twice. That will hide the codes for that reference — this is just Word showing you that codes were change. You don’t have to turn off Track Changes. It really does work without any hassle.

I wrote a 900 page dissertation, dozens of articles, and a 500 page book using Zotero. It is a quite fast habit to develop to quickly click accept twice when field codes pop up.

That said, it is really difficult for any Word Add-in (Zotero, Endnote, Mendeley, etc.) to interact with track changes, because the controls for this have changed many times over the versions. This is even an issue for Word’s native (terrible) bibliography function and the Word “Compatibilty Mode” feature. The Zotero developers have and continue to look into ways to make it work more nicely with Track Changes, but it is a very difficult problem to solve (not least which because it’s not clear that disabling tracking is the desired behavior).

You can use a Macro yourself to accept all tracked changes in Fields in one go (so your workflow would be to use this macro to accept field changes, then proceed with the rest of your review).
http://www.msofficeforums.com/word/23330-how-get-track-changes-ignore-field-code.html

This isn't an issue with "corrupted" documents. It is simply that Word is tracking changes to field codes. You can address this yourself by running the macro I linked above, which will accept all changes to field codes in your document. If that exact code doesn't work, you can try to google around for VBA code for Word 2016 that accept all track changes in field codes (e.g., perhaps this https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_word-msoffice_custom/how-to-remove-all-revisions-from-an-unknown-author/33c42bf7-c4fa-4f64-85be-ab86b1930c5a?auth=1). Let me know if you find something that works, and I will gladly add it to the Zotero wiki.

Regarding whether this was "fixed" in the past, it used to be that Zotero documents could get easily corrupted with Track Changes on. This was fixed, but that never changed Word's default behavior to track changes to documents, including changes to field codes.

Is there a way for Word to ignore those changes made by Zotero. I just did a test of a document with EndNote and of a different document with Zotero. With track changes on, Word did not display the changes in references or bibliography in the document that used EndNote.
If I was not concerned about tracking the reference changes, then that works great for me, with a minimum of fuss.

It did list all the changes in the Zotero document. And when I moved to Next Change, it would display a large chunk of text consisting of the field codes, and was difficult to review and accept one change at a time. I assume the field codes in Zotero and EndNote are similar, so I am not sure why Word is treating them differently.
Does Word recognize EndNote and not display the changes there?
If so, if this is built in, can we request that Word add a feature to recognize Zotero?

While there may be some hack, where we can run code or replace files in the system, it makes those of us concerned about security nervous to do this, unless it comes from an official site - e.g. Word or Zotero

Thank you

Could it be that EndNote is internally switching Track Changes OFF and ON before and after a EndNote field code is changed?

My recollection was that Simon set the Word add-on to disable track changes while citations were updating (and re-enabled after if it was enabled before).

You mean Endnote's or Zotero's? If Endnote's behavior is annoying, could you explain why? That seemed like a decent solution to me