No italics in bibliography. In Word, but not the standard Word styles problem

oliverkenny · November 17, 2022

I'm using Office 2016 with the Word extension and recently when adding a bibliography, there were suddenly no italics in the references. It had been working fine until then, and apart from the italics everything else appears to be working fine.

I've tried the standard Aaron Aardvark fix, changing bibliographic style (the problem remains with all of them), as well as reverting Office to an earlier version, and reinstalling Zotero. None of these have changed anything.

When I do 'create bibliography from item' individually in Zotero things are fine, so my guess is that it's a problem with Word or the Word extension. I even tried playing around with the paste options in Word but also no change.

I'd really appreciate any help on this!

adomasven · November 17, 2022

Could you submit a Report ID from Zotero?

Does it insert properly styled bibliography in a new Word document? If so, see Troubleshooting Errors in Word Processor Documents

oliverkenny · November 17, 2022

Thanks for your answer.

Report ID: 1415415989

New Word document - no, the problem remains in new documents.

adomasven · November 17, 2022

Which citation style are you using in Word? What's the full version number of Word? Have you recently installed any new Word plugins?

oliverkenny · November 17, 2022

Citation style - I've tried all the standardly available styles and the problem is there for all of them.

Version number - I was originally on 15629.20208 but I reverted it to 15225.20288 and then to 14827.20158 but there was no change.

Plugins - Zotero is my only Word plugin.

adomasven · November 17, 2022

Not all citation styles use italics in bibliography, and not for every item type. Try citing a book with APA7. The book title should be italicized.

oliverkenny · November 17, 2022

Yes I know - I'm saying that regardless of the citation style and regardless of the type of item (book, journal article, chapter, report, etc.) there is no italics anywhere in any style.

adomasven · November 17, 2022

Could you produce a Debug ID from Zotero for inserting a bibliography into a new document with one cited book with APA? Do you get italics in other word processors: LibreOffice or Google Docs?

oliverkenny · November 17, 2022

Debug ID D861954385

Everything works fine in Google Docs (that was actually the workaround I used this time) but I haven't tried LibreOffice

adomasven · November 17, 2022

Hm. This is highly unusual. It's most likely something with Word config. The quickest way to test that is to create a new Windows user account and see whether it works there.

oliverkenny · November 17, 2022

New user account - yes, it works fine when I create a new user account.

Does that provide an insight into how it can be fixed on my main account or is that the end of the road?

adomasven · November 17, 2022

Yes. You will have to reset your Word config. Start with renaming your Normal.dotm (to something else, like Normal.dotm.bak) and let Word recreate it https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/change-the-normal-template-normal-dotm-06de294b-d216-47f6-ab77-ccb5166f98ea

If that doesn't help, see https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/how-to-reset-user-options-and-registry-settings-in-word-298d8a79-7a68-48a2-8946-2e8f98840314

oliverkenny · November 17, 2022

Great! It now works in new documents.

Old documents still don't work though - I have to copy and paste everything across into a new document. Is that also fixable?

adomasven · November 17, 2022

I'm afraid not. I imagine the settings of your previous Normal.dotm are stored in your existing documents, which is why they are not fixed.

oliverkenny · November 17, 2022

Well thank you in any case for all the help - I really appreciate it!