Error Message - "The style you have selected does not appear vaild..."

I have been working on a Word document for several months - inserting citations and today I have an error message when inserting a citation or changing the document properties on the Zotero Tab.

The Log number is: D295896341 and the Error code is 1374615892.

I have opened a new document and was able to insert citations and a bibliography.
  • edited August 2, 2018
    What style are you using? Is the problem fixed if you change to a different style and back?
  • Presumably this is about the "Unified style sheet for linguistics" style. I changed the style ID yesterday evening and put a redirect in renamed-styles.json: https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles/pull/3629/files#diff-2657503fcaf93aaf9836fa01c692099e

    It's my understanding that Zotero should be able to handle such style ID changes, but maybe this is a new bug/regression.
  • Oh, @dstillman, do I understand correctly that renamed-styles.json needs to be updated manually? (see e.g. https://github.com/zotero/zotero/commit/16f228b2a327ce6379849742d270c2032fc68e88)

    If so, could you update it for the next Zotero release?
  • Also have this problem using the Unified Style sheet for linguistics. It also works in new docs.
    @Rintze - what should we do with the links you've provided?
    the zotero add-in in Word won't let me even access the document preferences. So is there a way to solve this within the existing document?
  • You could try installing this version with internet disabled (download, disable your internet, then install): https://gist.githubusercontent.com/rmzelle/5cca5f41ff8b8621c82a10eccbebf6e6/raw/02ea4ed708ea6a8a0bc3724643ad60c012cf5f1a/unified-style-linguistics.csl

    The link above is for the old version of the style with its original style ID. Unplugging your internet should prevent Zotero from attempting to update it to the new version, which might circumvent the problem.

    Once installed, try changing the citation style in your existing Word document to a different style (such as APA). If that works, you can re-enable internet on your computer, install the new version of the style (from https://www.zotero.org/styles?q=id:unified-style-sheet-for-linguistics), and switch your Word document to that.

  • Wonderful!
    That worked.
    Thank you very much.
  • I had the same problem. (Following up from this thread: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/314325#Comment_314325 )

    What is the best strategy going forward? Is the manual revert just to make things work until the update is fixed in Zotero? Or could we just have the filename back the way it was, if that is the problem?
  • Once you have (carefully and exactly) followed Rintze's instructions, this will just work going forward without any further fix; the problem is not the new style, it's just the update from old to new, which this takes care of.
  • edited August 8, 2018
    For a single document it would be fine (if not optimal). But not if I have a large number of old documents I don't want to update all of immediately. (Note that this would includes old drafts or other projects that I am not currently working on, but will now be corrupt until/unless I fix it this way for each of them.)

    And if this isn't actually fixed officially, then every single person who uses this style will have to manually fix all of their documents, which is unreasonable. Every document using this style was just corrupted by the update, as far as I can tell because of a name change that isn't strictly necessary.

    This isn't intended as a complaint about the help updating the style (which I originally requested), but it is a serious usability issue.
  • It will likely auto-fix with the next Zotero update, too.
  • edited August 8, 2018
    Is that quick/often?

    I mean, I know there aren't that many of us linguists, but what if this was APA?
  • what do you hope to get out of this exchange?
  • All of my documents are broken. You seem to be suggesting that's not a big deal, not for me personally nor anyone else using the stylesheet.

    I asked a reasonable question above: when/how will this be corrected? Your response was dismissive.

    I'm not intending to be impatient. But I don't like being dismissed.
  • Loading of this style is fixed in the Zotero beta. You can use that until the next release is out.

    We'll also fix the next version to open the document preferences if a style can't be loaded for any reason (which clearly should happen, since the error message says to choose a different style).
  • edited August 9, 2018
    @dstillman, would it be feasible to set up some kind of automatic redirects for the Zotero Style Repository (or host the renamed style at the original style URL)? We have Travis CI test renamed-styles.json (it must be valid JSON, may only contain redirects for styles not (i.e., no longer) present in the repository, and the target must be in the repository), so it should be quite reliable.

    That way we would no longer have this breakage between the time we change style IDs and Zotero releases a new version, and it would likely help other implementations too.
  • Great, thank you for addressing this so quickly!
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