Citations lost in .docx shared over Google Drive

kalder · 2025-05-12T07:58:36+00:00

Hello,
I am co-writing a paper with a colleague and we share it via Google Drive. For a number of reasons we are in fact working on our Desktop local Word versions. And every time we add Zotero citations they are lost after the syncing is complete. The previously inserted citations appear and look just as normal text.
My colleague started the document and as long as he worded on his desktop on the file in GDrive, the problem did not appear.

Any idea?

Thanks

poettli · 2025-05-12T08:01:01+00:00

https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/moving_documents_between_word_processors

If you use the Zotero word processor plugin to add citations to your document and then open the document in another word processor, the Zotero citation links will be lost.

kalder · 2025-05-12T10:46:41+00:00

Thanks, I was aware of this but this appears a kind of different or more specific anomaly:
- as long as my colleague worked on the file alone, on MS Word app, and the file was on GDrive, no problem arrived.
- the problem appears as soon as I open the file in Ms. Word. I am not using GDoc to open/edit the file. Thus, there should not be any "another word processor" issue.
- Just to clarify: at the moment we are using GDoc just any cloud system such as Dropbox, OneDrive, NextCloud, etc. I have never encountered this problem with these systems.

poettli · 2025-05-12T10:56:06+00:00

Ah yes, I misread GDrive for Google docs

dstillman · 2025-05-12T13:47:29+00:00

There's really no other answer here. Zotero citations are standard Word fields. If you're working in Word itself and saving as .docx, the citations would not be flattened. Someone would have to be opening/editing the file in something other than Word or saving in something other than .docx. (Note that one person could likely be saving the file in the wrong format and have it still work on their computer as long as they didn't close Word and reopen the file.)