Wrong font in the Bibliography using Word
Good morning,
for some reason (and for an unknown time), Zotero now insists in using Times New Roman as a font in the bibliography and I cannot change that.
I have found these instructions
https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/word_default_font
but while the word style sheet allows me to change for example the colour or size of the text, the font always appears as TNR.
I'm rather sure that this wasn't a problem "some time ago", but according to our admin there was an update recently? Our Zotero version is 5.0.96.2 and I'm using Word 2019 that was installed on some server version of windows 10. The bug also occurs when starting a new document or using another user account.
Thanks in advance,
Simon
for some reason (and for an unknown time), Zotero now insists in using Times New Roman as a font in the bibliography and I cannot change that.
I have found these instructions
https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/word_default_font
but while the word style sheet allows me to change for example the colour or size of the text, the font always appears as TNR.
I'm rather sure that this wasn't a problem "some time ago", but according to our admin there was an update recently? Our Zotero version is 5.0.96.2 and I'm using Word 2019 that was installed on some server version of windows 10. The bug also occurs when starting a new document or using another user account.
Thanks in advance,
Simon
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.
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.
(And it's not a question where a bug is; what I'm saying is that there is just no font setting in Zotero that could be adjusted. TNR is specified *somewhere* in Word).
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
I have no programming knowledge, but it looks like Word automatically changes the setting back to TNR if the editing process takes too long... at least the procedure described above works reproducibly well on smaller text files with 3 references but fails in a larger manuscript (about 80 references or so).
1. Can you provide a clear way how to reproduce this issue in a new document?
2. You might be able to fix this by selecting your whole bibliography and manually changing the text font to Calibri, or whatever other font you want to use from the "Home" tab, then applying the "Bibliography" style from the "Styles" subtab/sidebar.
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.
Did you find any way to get the font to stick after it all going to TNR?
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.
You don't need to make the case for the feature. It's already there because we know it's valuable and it should work properly. It is quite niche so I'm sorry if we cannot address it immediately. At the very least you can always set the correct font on the bibliography before submitting the paper.
A suitable workaround is, of course, to just copy the bibliography, paste it as regular text and delete the real bibliography.
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!
But in the document that's giving the bibliography in Times New Roman, I can't for the life of me figure out where Times New Roman is still specified in Word. And it seems especially odd that the bibliography field codes display in the proper font (Arial), but the bibliography itself displays in Times New Roman.
Is there any sense perhaps to moving the instruction for Zotero to (re)apply the bibliography style to the very end of the process (if it's not already there)?
For Macs:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/about-office-what-version-of-office-am-i-using-932788b8-a3ce-44bf-bb09-e334518b8b19#OSVersion=macOS
For Windows:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/about-office-what-version-of-office-am-i-using-932788b8-a3ce-44bf-bb09-e334518b8b19#OSVersion=Windows
The bibliography should adhere to the MDPI style (Palatino Linotype 9), but it keeps changing to Times New Roman 12 whenever I add a new reference/citation.