APA bibliography is not alphabetically ordered

jverstreken
Good day,

I am using the 7th Edition of APA. With my most recent "refresh", it appears my bibliography is separated into three groups, all of which are alphabetically ordered (within their grouping). I cannot seem to combine them to form a single bibliography.

There are no "return" entries to separate them. I could manually drag them however with the next refresh, it will revert back.

I have googled the heck out of this and cannot seem to find a similar situation out there. Hoping for some guidance. Thanks!

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u14172429/krqc3p074u5w0lrby7zt.png
  • damnation
    Can you test this out in a fresh document?
    You are using the Word addon to add citations and the bibliography?
  • jverstreken
    In a new document, the bibliography works as it should. It's as if there is some formatting in the original document that is preventing this function.

    It seems the simple solution would be to just copy/paste to a new document. I can try this however this is a 50 page thesis with significant other formatting....could be a nightmare. (but I'll give it a whirl.)

    And yes, I am using MS Word on a PC.
  • adamsmith
    Have you tried switching to a different style and back? That might work. Also, check if you can click the "Revert all" button in the "Add/edit bibliography dialog.
  • jverstreken
    I tried changing the style-> no effect.
    When I try to "revert all", the button is greyed out.
    Tried copy/paste to a fresh document -> no effect.
  • adamsmith
    Can you reinstall the APA style from zotero.org/styles ? Can you see anything systematic about how the lit is sorted?
  • jverstreken
    Oooo, I'm making progress. So at some point, the links to the handful of references at the begining of the bibliography were broken, hence why there were not updating. So I deleted them and re-entered the citations. Now, however, I am getting some kind of programming code preceeding the citation. (see image)

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u14172429/g8nkq338nykvm25hf2yh.png
  • adamsmith
    Is this for all or just a couple of citations? If it's just a couple, try thoroughly deleting and re-inserting them again: these are the codes that Zotero inserts for citations, but they look like they're somehow missing the markers that tell Word they're hiddenf fields (???) not sure how that happens, but there have been a couple of cases of this over the years.
  • jverstreken
    *********SOLUTION**************************
    It does in fact appear that several of the links between the in-text citations and the bibliography had broken. I have to assume this is from sharing the document with other editors via email, etc., but who really knows. The solution was to:

    1) identify the references (in the biblio) that were broken. This was evident to me as they did not alpha order when "refreshed".
    2) delete the references in the biblio (I copied them to a blank document for safety's sake)
    3) re-insert the in-text citations.

    Upon refreshing, everything remains in alpha order.

    Thanks for your support!
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