Citations and bibliography always unlink when I paste it to another Google docs

edited January 18, 2023
Report ID: 2079290003

Sorry for the bad grammar. Zotero Connector is installed in Chrome and Gdocs, 'My Library' is open, Zotero is signed-in on Gdocs, and I have no collaborators on Gdocs. The laptop that I use has Windows 10 Pro.

I use APA 7th ed. I edit the default Zotero citation. e.g: from the default (Jones et al., 2021) to → Jones et al. (2021) and (Jones et al. 2021; Thomas, 2011)

I have different drafts. I copy-paste the texts with citations to another Gdocs. When I click "Add/edit bibliography", all the citations become unlinked.

I also have this problem even if I paste the citations on the same Gdocs. It works fine at first, but when I paste some of the citation on the same Gdocs, some citations sometimes become unlinked. I always edit the default citations.




Steps to reproduce (all steps are done on Gdocs2):

1. Copy and paste texts with citations from Gdocs1 to Gdocs2
2. On Gdocs2, click "Zotero" from the Gdocs menu bar
3. Click "Add/edit bibliography" (Note: after clicking "Add/edit bibliography", sometimes nothing happens on Gdocs and Zotero. I close Chrome and Zotero, then re-open, then repeat this step.)
4. All the citations become unlinked. Error message "You must insert a citation before performing this operation"

5. Click an unlinked citation
6. Click "Edit with Zotero"
7. Click "relink citation"
8. "Zotero - document preferences", Click APA 7th edition, Click OK
9. Change the citation from (Jones et al., 2021) to → Jones et al. (2021)

10. Click "Zotero" from the Gdocs menu bar
11. Click "Add/edit bibliography"
12. Zotero message:
"You have modified this citation since Zotero generated it. Do you want to keep your modifications and prevent future updates?

Clicking "Yes" will prevent Zotero from updating this citation if you add additional citations, switch styles, or modify the item to which it refers. Clicking "No" will erase your changes.

Original: (Jones et al., 2021)
Modified: Jones et al. (2021)"

13. Click "Yes"
14. Bibliography was not added.
15. Click "Add/edit bibliography" again. Bibliography was added
16. When I relink another citation, then edit the citation, the Zotero message in step no. 12 appeared. Since I always edit the citations, I often get this error.
  • Wait, do you mean that you're editing citations directly in the document? Don't do that. The citations shouldn't become unlinked regardless, and we can look into that, but to use narrative citations or multi-item citations all you need to do is customize the citation.
  • Thanks for the reply! Is there a way for narrative citations to also include the author's surname? I read I need to manually type the author's surname bc Zotero will only cite the year for narrative citations.

    If I customize citations (not edit directly from the document), will I not get any error when I copy and paste the citations? or do I need to always add citations via Zotero? Like what I encountered before, it works fine at first but some citations become unlinked (this happened when I edit citations directly in the document)
  • Yes, currently you have to use Omit Author and type the name manually, but an update coming relatively soon should improve on that.

    Copying and pasting between Google Docs documents should work fine, as long as you have the Zotero Connector installed. If you can reproduce it not working, we'd want to know. (But again, it shouldn't have broken even if you were editing citations manually. That's technically something you can do — Zotero just needs to ask you what it should do with the citation going forward, hence that prompt — but it does make general weirdness more likely.
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