Thank you for your response,

it's very well possible that the bug is not Zotero-centered but occures in the interaction of both programs. But since Timees New Roman is not used anywhere in my document, I qrise the question why part automatically generated by Zotero suddenly is.


>>But you can definitely change Word stylesheets to use different fonts. If you're not seeing that option, you're not looking in the right place<<

Yes, I know how to use a word style sheet. I tried to adjust the font and at least the style sheet settings are fine - I mentioned that I was able to change color and text size of the bibliography using that option, right? Yet the font does not change even with correct font settings.

Okay, that helped... but in a weird way that I don't understand.

1.) If I change the citation style, the wrong font remains.

2.) I then change the font in the word style sheet to some random font and nothing happens, even after refreshing.

3.) Manually applying the style sheet (with the random font selected) on a reference changes that single reference - and after refreshing, all references have that random font.

4.) Changing the font in the style sheet now works. The font also stays when changing the citation style back to what I wanted to use.

5.) To again change the font, I need to go back to point 3.


Anyhow, thank you for guiding me to this weird workaround :D

Is TNR still in the default style? Might be inheriting from there?

I think I found what causes the process to break: if I add notes to a reference (via the >Add/Edit Bibliography< function), TNR is selected as font. I can still change the colour and make the whole reference list bold or italic using the Word style sheet but cannot adjust the TNR anymore.

1. Create a new document. Do not change any Word style sheets. Add some lorem ipsum, some references and a reference list. Select a reference and edit the bibliography to add some word to the reference text. Now change the Word style sheet to another font that is not TNR and apply. Nothing will happen, so klick in one line of your reference list and manually apply the literature style sheet. Now either the whole reference or at least one word will have the new font. Refresh your reference list. Your references are now in TNR.

2. I can manually select the reference list and apply a font from the Home tab but it will ofc be replaced once the reference list gets refreshed. Applying the bibliography style from the style will apply the font for the moment, but it also will be replaced once the list is refreshed.


What somehow worries me is, that when you take a blank word file (all Calibri, no extra settings), insert some reference and a bibliography and *then* modify the literature style sheet to another font, Zotero already doesn't apply the changes. Even when manually refreshing the reference list, nothing happens until you manually apply the style sheet to one of the references and then again refresh the whole bibliography. From this point on you can use and apply the style sheet as in any other text - but it looks to me as one needed to somehow "connect" the automatically generated bibliography to the style sheet.
This is only a minor inconvenience, but might hint at a larger problem.

I've now tested that using a Destkop PC instead of our server system.

I'm using Wors 2019, Version 1808

I just select any of the references and add a single word to the reference text.
I just found that I can repair the whole thing by resetting the modified reference. Unfortunately, the edit option is quite valuable to us and the bug is very annoying:

In our field, we quite often add some extra information to the references, such as "for a recent review see: ..." or just replace a placeholder references with plain comments/formulas/definitions that otherwise would be a footnote/endnote but can only be sorted into the Zotero reference list this way. Also some reference data are unneccessarily complicated and cannot automatically be handled by Zotero as far as we know - but this is leading too far. It's just an important feature to us.

Great, I really hope you can adress this bug at some point.

A suitable workaround is, of course, to just copy the bibliography, paste it as regular text and delete the real bibliography.

I seem to be having the same issue as well, but I've only noticed it since the latest beta update (to 5.0.97-beta.50+5f61ac23a). For me, it doesn't appear necessary to insert a new citation for the bibliography to change fonts. Simply refreshing the document pushes the bibliography into Times New Roman for me.

That said, if I toggle to showing Field Codes on the Times New Roman bibliography, then the proper font from the Bibliography style displays. It's only when the bibliography displays that Times New Roman seems "stuck" as the bibliography font, irrespective of what I do with the style.

I'm not sure if this helps at all but wanted to mention it. Thanks so much!

Could @SimonSchwarzwald, @souvenir, or @dstark send a small snippet document where you can reproduce this problem to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread. Make sure you include your full Word version number too.

I have the same problem, Office 365/Windows 10, and of course Office 365 is a constantly updating subscription so who knows the "actual" Word version...

Hi, have there been any updates to fix this issue of different fonts appearing in references, or is the manual workaround of copying and pasting the bibliography as regular text still the go-to solution? Thanks!

@MuhammadAllam Have you actually edited the style in Word? That's what's controlling the font, not Zotero. On the latest Word on Mac, this is done by going to the Home tab, clicking the Styles Pane, and scrolling down to find "Bibliography", clicking on the arrow on its right to "Modify Style".

I recreated the problem (maybe someone else referenced this here and I missed it). It appears to only happen for me if I add citations to the bibliography that are not directly referenced in the document. So, in my instance, I had 136 sources which were noted in endnotes. Zotero used the 136 to create a bibliography. When I used the toolbar Zotero feature within Word to add two additional sources that were noted in the text of the document but not in a Zotero-linked note, upon refresh, the now-138 references appeared as Times New Roman. Thus, to return to the font style of choice, I need to select all the bibliography entries, clear the formatting back to Normal, and then reapply my bibliography style. Even so, each time I refresh the bibliography, the problem presents itself again.