Trouble editing bibliography efficiently in Word (Mac)

sojal2
Hi, I almost finish my Phd and I had the "stupid" idea to update Zotero... since then, I have trouble non-stop with the referencing! I finally was able to generate the bibliography after 3 hours and numerous try... Perhaps I had a main problem... the bibliography didn't appear at the right place (instead it appears in the middle of my intro (!)... So, I copy-paste the bibliography in an other document to edit it separately and when I click not on add-edit bibliography, I just got error messages... I need to add some extra references as it didn't generate all the references in my dissertation... Is it because it need to be linked with citation that I can't edit the "stand-alone" bibliography?

(Error message is in French but here's a translation : Zotero has encountered an error when updating your document. )

I did all the step in the troubleshooting instructions... I don't want to loose half an hour of my life regerating the bibliography except if it's the only thing I can do :(

The fact is that I just want to add the missing references and get that PhD done before Christmas! Thanks!!
  • damnation
    edited 2 days ago
    If you've copied the bibliography to a new document without any citations it will give a warning because without citations a bibliography really has no way of existing.

    Zotero on Mac unfortunately is very slow, especially with super large documents. Just place your cursoer where you need the bibliography, click on the button and then let it do its thing. Unfortunately you'll have to wait and that can take some hours.

    If you have access to a PC, you could do it there. It'll be faster.
  • sojal2
    edited 2 days ago
    Thanks! Zotero on Mac was much more quicker with the previous version ... I made the update to 7.0.11 this week with the new visual and since then everything is just slow as I have never experienced! ... I wish I could "undo" the update :(

    The problem is that I made several modifications to the in-text citations due to some mistakes in the style I'm using (Université de Montréal APA 7 français) and if I click on "refresh bibliography" I'm afraid to lose every changes...

    If I wait for generating again a new bibliography, would I be able to add only the missing references directly with the add/edit bibliography or I will need to refresh all the documents and find where is the missing references manually?
  • sojal2
    by the way I place my cursor where I need it and it just keep adding the bibliography where the first in-text references is...
  • damnation
    dstillman, could you assist here?
  • adomasven
    Thanks! Zotero on Mac was much more quicker with the previous version ... I made the update to 7.0.11 this week with the new visual and since then everything is just slow as I have never experienced! ... I wish I could "undo" the update :(
    You can still download Zotero 6 from the download page, remove the current version and reinstall it. Your data won't be affected. However Zotero 7 definitely didn't make integration slower, at least it shouldn't have, and this may just be a coincidence you're seeing. If you can test with Zotero 6 and definitely see an improvement in speed, please create a new thread about it because we would like to fix that.
    The problem is that I made several modifications to the in-text citations due to some mistakes in the style I'm using (Université de Montréal APA 7 français) and if I click on "refresh bibliography" I'm afraid to lose every changes...
    Zotero will prompt you (may have already prompted you) for each changed citation and will ask whether you want to keep your modifications. Pressing Refresh or inserting a bibliography after that will not undo those changes that you have asked Zotero to keep.
    If I wait for generating again a new bibliography, would I be able to add only the missing references directly with the add/edit bibliography or I will need to refresh all the documents and find where is the missing references manually?
    Not sure what you're asking about here. Unless you have automatic citation updates disabled, every time you insert a citation Zotero will update the bibliography that is already present in the document.
    the bibliography didn't appear at the right place (instead it appears in the middle of my intro (!)...
    The Word for Mac integration can be quite slow. If you edit your document after issuing a Zotero command, such as adding a bibliography, Zotero might insert it in the wrong place.
    So, I copy-paste the bibliography in an other document to edit it separately and when I click not on add-edit bibliography, I just got error messages... I need to add some extra references as it didn't generate all the references in my dissertation...
    You shouldn't manually edit the Zotero created bibliography in Word, because Zotero will overwrite those changes. If some citation is not showing up in the document, you should put your cursor in that citation and press Add/Edit Citation and make sure it's a live Zotero citation and the correct item appears in the citation dialog. If you cannot do that for some reason, you can press the Add/Edit Bibliography button and use the Edit Bibliography screen to add missing items manually too.
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