Citation numbers not lining up with references

  • leahjanssen
    Hello, if anyone can please help me. I'm working on a large important document and for some reason Zotero has stopped updating the references (AMA format), so the #s aren't lining up with what the actual reference should be. I'm on a Mac, using Zotero through Chrome, and it's a MS Word Document. An example would be, click on the #63 to "Add/Edit citation" and when the red bar pops up the author's name IS correct, but the # corresponding to it in the Bibliography is incorrect. I'm so confused. I've tried to refresh, update, add/edit bib, etc. I keep either getting errors or nothing happens. Sync appears to be on fine. Any help would be amazing. Thank you.
  • bwiernik
    If you go to an earlier number in your document, place the cursor next to it, and click the Add/Edit citation button, does the edit window pop up with the item in it? Or is the window empty?

    What exactly are the numbers you are expecting and that you are seeing?
  • leahjanssen
    I can try again tomorrow but Zotero keeps stalling and the red box doesn't pop up. I'm not sure if it's Zotero or MS Word, but it froze up on me. Something is not right.
  • bwiernik
    How want citations are in your document? If you click the Document Preferences button, is the “Automatically update citations” box unchecked?
    If so, what is likely happening is that Zotero took a long time to update your document after inserting a citation (this can happen in very long documents with many citations) and asked you if you wanted to disable automatic updating to speed things up, to which you answered yes.

    You can update all of the citation numbers at once by clicking the Refresh button or re-enabling automatic updates. Depending on the length of your document, that could take some time.
  • leahjanssen
    Ok, I restarted everything. When i put the cursor next to the citation #, the red box comes up blank. When i highlight the citation #, the red box pops up with the correct info in the box. But it's doing an odd thing now when i open and close the red box for the citation (via the add/edit citation) it will change the citation from #71 to #1 (but the 1 will be underlined for some reason).
    Since it is a long document, i unchecked the "auto update citations" box, but I can't tell if it's working properly. I have 137 citations so this is a challenge to go through and see if they are correct...and then make sure i'm not changing them again like it did with the #71 above.
    I get that if it's unchecked and i need to manually refresh it - but it doesn't seem to do that when i click the "refresh" link. Often the red bar comes up with the blue line working but doesn't do anything and times out. Very frustrating.
    I'm sorry if none of this info is not useful. I'm still struggling and needing help. Thank you for continuing to help me, i am very grateful for that.
  • leahjanssen
    Also, for some reason I have one reference that has two numbers (#13 & #77, for example). I have cleaned up any duplicates in my library and folders (even though it doesn't come up as a duplicate, despite that they have the same information). This is challenging b/c it is a ref often used. Both 13 & 77 direct the reader to the accurate source, but they are listed twice in the Bibliography under different numbers for some reason. I had this happen before with other ref #s but i cleared it up through the duplicates function.
    Any advice/suggestions? Thank you.
  • dstillman
    Just to eliminate variables, I would re-enable "Automatically update citations" for now and check whether you're still having trouble. If so, see Debugging Broken Documents. You should be able to isolate the problem by copying sections of the document to another document. If you can find a specific section that's broken, you can send it to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread and we can investigate.

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