Inconsistent inline citation style can not be fixed

zhengchencai
Hi there,

I have inconsistent inline citation styles in one document, such as:

(Lydia Elshoff et al., 2012; A. Koupparis et al., 2021).

A. Koupparis et al., 2021 even appears in three different styles: A. Koupparis et al., 2021, Koupparis et al., 2021, and Andreas Koupparis et al., 2021, all in the same Word document.

I removed duplicates and refreshed the citations in Word. The metadata is correct in Zotero. I also tried reinstalling the Word plugin, but nothing worked.

I'm using a Mac, and the document was previously edited on Windows. If I create a new Word document on Mac and insert this reference, it displays correctly. However, strange things happen even after completely deleting this reference and bibliography from the original document:

1) The paper still appears in the bibliography after adding it.

2) The inline format remains incorrect after inserting the reference.

Could you please help me fix this? Thanks a lot.
  • damnation
    Don't delete duplicates, but merge them.
    Citations can live inside a document. You will need to delete the citations to the now-deleted versions and reinsert them, making sure that you use the one mentioned under "cited".
    You can switch to a different style to make the identification of these stray duplicates easier.
  • zhengchencai
    Thanks a lot for the reply. As I mentioned, I’ve deleted all inline citations for this reference, refreshed, and reinserted it, but it still doesn’t display in the correct style, no matter how I switch citation styles back and forth. One thing I noticed: after deleting this reference and the bibliography, and confirming with a search that nothing remains, if I insert the bibliography first, the reference still appears in the bib, even though there are no inline citations in the document. It seems like some data is stored in the document. If I unlink citations and then reinsert them, it works. However, I’m wondering if there’s a way to fix this automatically using zotero.
  • adamsmith
    If you've actually removed all instances from the document, you have a remaining one in a hidden citation field. Have Word show field codes to identify where and delete:
    https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/word_field_codes
  • zhengchencai
    Thanks a lot. Indeed, there is a hidden citation field. After deleting it, the style is correct.
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