Problems with in-text citation after Update today

Hello,
today i updated the Zotero-Application on my Mac and the in-text citations changed from [2][5][89] to [2,5,89]. My problem is that the citation does not appear in the correct position in the Word Document and sometimes appears somewhere completely different with another citation in the bracket. Before the update i never had this problem. I am afraid that when i cite something, it cites it on the wrong place, which will destroy my work.
Please help me with my issue!!!!!
Thanks in advance!
Best regards,
Clara
  • My problem is that the citation does not appear in the correct position in the Word Document and sometimes appears somewhere completely different with another citation in the bracket.
    Can you send a sample document that demonstrates this — as in, a version immediately before this happen — to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread?
  • Thanks for the quick answer! I sent a document via e-mail. I also tried to cite again in this test-document, but sometimes the citation does not even appear and also the number of cited documents in the bibliography of the document does not change.
  • Good Morning!
    I wrote the e-mail, but I did not get any answers on my problem. Can anyone help me with this issue? It is urgent and at the moment I cannot use Zotero, because it does not cite at the correct place. It cites in the following bracket and I don't know why this happens, and I am afraid that it can also change the other citations.
    Thanks in advance!
    Best regards
    Clara
  • You are using a custom citation style in this document. Can you reproduce this issue with a standard Zotero citation style (like IEEE)?
  • I tried two other styles (APA and Nature) and I had the same problem as I had with the custom citation.
  • And also with IEEE it shows the same problem...
  • Ok, I tried citing in this document and I couldn't see any obvious issues. Can you describe precisely where you put your cursor and cite, what you expect to happen and what happens instead? What is the full version number of Word that you are running (e.g. 16.66.1)?
  • So I tried to cite something behind [7] in the test-document I sent you, so I put the cursor behind [7]. As you can see, the citation did not appear behind [7] but it appeared in the next citation (change from [8]-[12] to [8]-[13]). My Word version is 16.66.1


    Before citation:
    Lhzgk,tdghfbvhgdkht,
    j,jhglfgjlzflgblbudsh<<<<<<< [1]–[3] <<<<<<<<<<<rdc
    #<sfkln-vBg[4]–[6]öööö,jdfa jbkaJBLFuew hflejffbw [7]
    Jköfhegueaigfakbfckj[8]–[12] wufdgblgquöfgjkb hjwbldfjhbFHJ
    Afhjkb,jwhbf,waj hjb.fwjhbf jhafb.jwbf kja.bfjw hja.kbf [5], [13]–[18] jöbhdkbfadfjhkabvuhjkda [19]

    After citation:
    Lhzgk,tdghfbvhgdkht,
    j,jhglfgjlzflgblbudsh<<<<<<< [1]–[3] <<<<<<<<<<<rdc
    #<sfkln-vBg[4]–[6]öööö,jdfa jbkaJBLFuew hflejffbw [7]
    Jköfhegueaigfakbfckj[8]–[13] wufdgblgquöfgjkb hjwbldfjhbFHJ
    Afhjkb,jwhbf,waj hjb.fwjhbf jhafb.jwbf kja.bfjw hja.kbf [5], [14]–[19] jöbhdkbfadfjhkabvuhjkda [20]
  • So what i expect is that the citation appears behind [7] and not after [8]-[12]
  • Can you reproduce this issue in a document with 3 or less citations? Can you be more specific where you put the cursor, and what your intention is? Are you trying to insert a new citation, or edit an existing citation by adding an additional item to it? Could you submit a Report ID from Zotero?
  • No i could not reproduce it in another document with less citations...
    The report ID is: 1611108806
    I put the cursor behind [7] (so behind the "]") and I wanted to add a new citation. So I clicked "add citation" i choosed the citation in zotero and then it appeared in the next citation. So instead of only citing [7] i wanted to cite a second paper.
  • Go into Zotero Preferences -> Cite -> Word Processors and reinstall the Word plugin. The modern Word plugin does not/should not have a "Add Citation" button. You should see a "Add/Edit Citation" button and use that.
  • Sorry there is already add/edit
  • When you press the add/edit button with the cursor behind "]" and the citation dialog opens you should see an already existing cited item in the dialog. Do you see it? Do you add a new item along the existing one?
  • No when I put the cursor behind "]" the opened dialog does not show the other citation. When I put the cursor before "]" (so it is in the bracket) then it shows me the citation from the bracket, but when I choose then a second citation it replaces the preexisting citation.
  • Can you take a screen recording of this issue and send it to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread?
  • I have sent you the screen recording.
  • Does this issue happen at all if you place the cursor not adjacent to existing citations? Do you see any issues if you place the cursor inside the citation?

    Generally it seems that Word for Mac may have recently changed the behavior for when it considers the cursor to be within a Word field, which is partially what may be causing your issue. If you place the cursor directly after an existing citation in the past and pressed Add/Edit Citation, you would get a citation dialog for the citation the cursor is next to, but this doesn't seem to be the case anymore. We will investigate this.
  • I tried it but when it is not adjacent it functions appearently... but when i then tried to cite again directly behind, it showed me the problem as before. When i placed the cursor in the bracket it showed me the citations and i could add one to it.

  • But in the past, when i clicked behind it there was no citation in the dialog...
  • edited November 9, 2022
    Ok, thanks for helping us debug this. We've discovered a bug in the recent version of Zotero. Sorry we didn't catch it earlier, but I was quite confused with your description. The words "before" and "behind" have the same meaning in my head, I would have used "before" and "after" to describe what you were doing.

    I also may be misremembering Word behavior from before on this. Either way, we will have a new release soon that fixes this problem. In the meantime you should not place the cursor directly after existing citations when citing to avoid this problem. We will post in this thread when the updated version is available. Sorry for the trouble this bug caused you!
  • Thanks for your help!
  • Zotero 6.0.18 is now out with a fix for this issue. Thanks again for helping to troubleshoot this!
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