Duplication of reference list with Zotero

Hey :)

We are two students currently writing on our Master thesis in a Google docs document.

Sometimes Zotero duplicated the reference list plenty of times; we ended up having around 120 pages due to that. So at the moment we have to do the references manually.

Our guess is that it happened when Zotero hanged itself and started to load forever and we tried to reload the (Google docs) page as it was the only option we had to access the document again.

We would be happy about any suggestion!

Best wishes :)
  • I just had this same issue today with Zotero in Google Docs - about 115 pages of duplicated versions of a 1.5 page reference list. This kept happening again and again as I with each update I made to the bibliography? Any ideas on how to prevent in the future?
  • If you use the Google Docs version history to revert to a version before this happened, can you reproduce it?
  • Perhaps - I can just again try revising the bibliography in the same way. How it has been happening is when revising the bibliography, Zotero would "freeze up" during the update to Google Docs, and during that time it was duplicating the bibliography many dozens of times inside of Google Docs. Each time I would have to quit Zotero to gain control of my document again. Very frustrating earlier today.
  • What exactly do you mean by "revising the bibliography"?

    If you're able to reproduce this problem in a copy of the document or a document excerpt you don't mind sharing, could you share it with support@zotero.org with a link to this thread?
  • I will do. Any for the record, "revising the bibliography" means using the "add/edit bibliography" function in the Zotero Google Docs plug in to add some citations to the bibliography that is already inserted in the document.

    Seperately, I needed to do that because Zotero did not include in the bibliography it built many of the citations from my document! Altogether, I am very disappointed in Zotero from these interlinked experiences today. In the few months I have used Zotero, I have found it to largely be a good product and I prefer that a non-profit produces it, but I need a reference manager to include all referenced citations in a bibliography and to not repeatedly make erroneous duplications of the bibliography. thank you.
  • edited March 28, 2020
    Wait, no, if you're not seeing all citations from the document in the bibliography, you absolutely shouldn't be adding them to the bibliography using Add/Edit Bibliography — you should fix the original citations, which likely became unlinked. Generating a bibliography from the citations in the document is the entire point of Zotero's word processor integration.

    We've had a couple reports of citations becoming unlinked in Google Docs when cutting/copying citations, and we've fixed a possible cause of that for the next version. But if you're not seeing a citation in the bibliography, you should delete and reinsert it so that it becomes active again, and then it will appear in the bibliography. And you should delete your existing bibliography, which at this point has manual modifications that shouldn't be necessary.
  • edited March 28, 2020
    (The duplication shouldn't happen regardless, though, so we'll look into whether we can reproduce that when editing a bibliography in Google Docs. But that function has a very specific use case — adding items to the bibliography that don't appear elsewhere in the document — that most people don't ever need.)
  • @gdr105: We'd need you to share the actual Google Doc — not just a copy and paste of the bibliography.
  • Some of the document listings I was adding to the bibliography were not cited in the documents - they were additional references I was including. And then still the bibliography "add/Edit" function duplicated the bibliography numerous times.

    But with the missing citations, they were so numerous - I find it unlikely that all of them became unlinked.
  • Sorry - I will not share my completed academic paper with you. Hope you can gain some benefit from what I've shared. thank you.
  • As I say, an excerpt in which you can reproduce the problem would also be fine. We're not able to reproduce this ourselves, so we likely need your help to fix the problem you're experiencing.
    But with the missing citations, they were so numerous - I find it unlikely that all of them became unlinked.
    When you click on one such citation, see if "Edit with Zotero" shows up, and see if the citation shows up in the citation dialog if you click "Edit with Zotero".
  • @gdr105: Whether or not you can share an excerpt of the document, Debug IDs from Zotero and the Zotero Connector while reproducing this would also be helpful.
  • I've emailed you the debut logs. Also, when I click on some of the in-text excluded citations, no, they do not say "edit with Zotero" - so as you mentioned earlier, somehow many of them must have become unlinked.
  • No, see the link I provided. Again, we need Debug IDs — which are just numbers you can post here — from both Zotero and the Zotero Connector. What you provided isn't a debug log and doesn't include the necessary info.
  • @gdr105 what citation style are you using?
  • Hi, we have got the same problem when editing in google docs. Could you please update your solutions if there is any? Much thanks!
  • Usually removing the section of the text that is duplicating itself and reinserting it solves the problem.
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