references are gone in WORD

AnnaDeanna
hello, I have been experiencing this problem over and over again. My references from WORD are gone again but they are in Zotero library. When I reference a new paper it does register and assign the citation number but all references at the end of the document are gone. How can I get it back?
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    edited January 1, 2021
    What do you mean by "gone"?

    If you're saying your citations are turning into plain text in the document, you're likely saving the document in the wrong format. See Existing Citations Not Detected.

    A Zotero bibliography is just a representation of the active citations in the document, so if the citations are no longer active citations, you won't have a bibliography.
  • AnnaDeanna
    no no....the whole list of references in my WORD documents are gone. When I want to see the list of authors I can't because it simply gone. Let me quickly check the link you have send. I have not changed any settings at all from my previous documents and I can see the list of references on my previous copies. However, when I made new additions, the list is gone
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    See what I wrote above:
    A Zotero bibliography is just a representation of the active citations in the document, so if the citations are no longer active citations, you won't have a bibliography.
  • AnnaDeanna
    no, I have never used 'unlinked citations' nor chosen other format of savings.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    You need to determine if you have active or inactive citations, as explained on the linked page. If they're not active, you or someone else who saved the document did something wrong that caused them to be flattened into plain text.

    Please take the time to go through the linked page carefully before posting further. It's all explained there.
  • AnnaDeanna
    hm... I still can add new citations though and I can change the style. If that would be a case, wouldn't that let me do all those manipulations and adding new citations?
  • AnnaDeanna
    okay thank you, I will check it again
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    I still can add new citations though and I can change the style. If that would be a case, wouldn't that let me do all those manipulations and adding new citations?
    No, that's irrelevant. You can do something to the file that flattens existing citations and still be able to add new ones.
  • AnnaDeanna
    all my citations are active. none of them greyed out . It happened to me previously and what I did is to make a copy of why existing document. Then re-started Zotero and word and changed the style and references were back, but its not working this time.
  • AnnaDeanna
    the button "add/edit bibliography" causes no change for some reason
  • AnnaDeanna
    I have also tried to re-cite manually but its still not adding the source at the end of the document
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    edited January 1, 2021
    all my citations are active. none of them greyed out
    No, you have that backwards. If they're active, they would have a gray background when you click on them.

    From the linked page:
    You can confirm that fields in a document are no longer active by clicking them and looking for a gray highlight (Word/LibreOffice) or "Edit with Zotero" popup (Google Docs). In Word and LibreOffice, you can also try toggling field codes.
  • AnnaDeanna
    yes, if I click on them they have a grey highlight, if I don't click on them there don't look grayish. When I click on citation and then use add/edit citation I have the correct author pops up in Zotero tab
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    edited January 1, 2021
    OK, good — the citations are fine, then. So toggle field codes in the document to show the codes and search for ZOTERO_BIBL to see if there's a bibliography. If there is, delete it completely. Then toggle field codes back and reinsert a bibliography.

    If you can't find a ZOTERO_BIBL field, or if nothing happens when you try to reinsert, restart Zotero and provide a Debug ID for clicking Add/Edit Bibliography and having nothing happen.
  • AnnaDeanna
    thank you ! will try that

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