Losing Citation Key from extras

If I have an item with "Citation Key" and other information in the "extras" field, when I drag the item to a group it loses the "Citation Key" subfield (but keeps the rest).

An item that has the "Citation Key" alone in "extras" is not touched.

I don't have any extensions installed or enabled.

Looks like a Zotero bug?
  • Zotero doesn't currently have a Citation Key field (though it will gain one soon). If you're referring to the Better BibTeX feature, you'll need to report that to the developer.
  • No. I'm talking about the contents of the "extras" field. In my library the "extras" field shows content that includes "Citation Key: xyz... other stuff" but after the move to a group the "Citation Key: xyz" part is removed and the "extras" field contains only "other stuff".

    I don't have any extensions installed or enabled, including Better BibTex.

  • Hi Dan, we've looked at this extensively for close to a month (wow I had no idea we were on this for so long) and it was a hail-mary to just try without BBT installed... and the problem remained for Bob. I have not been able to recreate the problem within my test suite, but also not with a copy of Bob's profile -- with or without BBT.

    This was the profile-clone I asked about on zotero-dev BTW. I have absolutely no idea what's special about Bob's situation.
  • @bobkummerfeld: Does this happen for a new item, or only an existing item? If only an existing item, it's likely just that you've previously dragged the item to the group without a citation key, and you need to delete the item in the group library and empty the trash before dragging again. (In a future version, Zotero will offer to update previously dragged items.)
  • @dstillman: Yes, that was the problem. I deleted the item in the trash and that fixed the problem.
    This is very unexpected behaviour! Surely you shouldn't be using a copy in the trash as cached value. The mental model when you drag something to the trash is that it's value is no longer to be used. The "trash can" metaphor is simply to allow restoration if you change your mind.

    @emilianoeheyns: unfortunately, when I re-install bbt the problem returns. I'll open another issue on github.
  • We've changed it in the latest Zotero beta to ignore items in the trash when dragging items between libraries.
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