an unlinking puzzle

ui_hpc
I'm currently one of about 6 people editing a word document containing zotero citations. Twice in the 4 months we've been working on the document, the citations have become unlinked. Since I'm the most advanced zotero user of the group, it's fallen on me to go back and manually reenter the 50+ cites. Is there any way that can happen besides someone intentionally clicking on "unlink citations?" The posts I've read seem to suggest that as long as everyone is using word (even an online version), this shouldn't happen accidentally. Before I go accusing one of my colleagues of sabotaging the document and costing me a couple of hours of work, I want to make sure this isn't a result of people using different versions of word or something innocent.
  • ui_hpc
    Does everyone need to have the zotero plugin installed? My guess is that not everyone does.
  • adamsmith
    No, not everyone needs Zotero or the Word add-on installed.
    As far as we know, Word Online is no problem, but I don't think that's been extensively tested.

    The only other reasons for unlinked references we're aware of are opening & saving in a different software (Pages, google docs, LibreOffice, I think also Dropbox's Word) or saving into an unsupported format (.odt, .rtf)
  • ui_hpc
    Thanks. I tracked down the document history to find which version where the unlinking occurred. One editor saved the document that had been named
    abcde.docx as abcde.docxFGH.docx, tacking on their initials AFTER the original docx extension. Word then added another docx extension. I wonder if that's the problem.

    I.e., abcde.docx had linked cites. abcde.docxFGH.docx did not. So maybe word wasn't saving as a full-featured Word document, but something else.
  • adamsmith
    Hmm -- possible, but when I try to replicate this, Zotero citations remain active in the .docxAS.docx document, so at a minimum, it's not a general issue and while it certainly wouldn't be the weirdest thing to ever happen in Word, I'd be surprised if that were the problem since the file stays .docx throughout.
  • lucas13garcia
    Hey! Glad to see this post as I'm having a similar issue. But I think I know the reason and would be glad if anyone has suggestions or send this feedback directly to the Zotero team.

    Example: I have my google drives file synced on my PC. In my Drive folders, I have docx files that I created using Word with Zotero citations and so on. However, if I go to a different computer and open the same file using Google Docs, it automatically unlinks all citations, even if later I open it back in my original PC/Word app. Help?
  • dstillman
    @lucas13garcia: As adamsmith mentions above, you can't open .docx files directly in Google Docs and preserve Zotero citations. If you want to open Word files in Google Docs, see Moving Documents Between Word Processors. Please start a new thread if you have additional questions.
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