Zotero suddenly faulty

jdonaldson
All of a sudden Zotero has changed my citations, adding random words like "world" and "ahead of print" (for things published for years) and getting page numbers wrong or leaving them out entirely. Argh!! It will randomly omit doi. Why?

Zhang, Qian Forrest, and John A. Donaldson. 2008. “The Rise of Agrarian Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Agricultural Modernization, Agribusiness and Collective Land Rights.” The China Journal, ahead of print, July 1. world. https://doi.org/10.1086/tcj.60.20647987.
Zhang, Qian Forrest, and John A. Donaldson. 2010. “From Peasants to Farmers: Peasant Differentiation, Labor Regimes and Land-Rights Institutions in China’s Agrarian Transition.” Politics & Society 38 (4): 4.
  • poettli
    What style are you using?
  • adamsmith
    edited August 25, 2025
    We'd also want to see the metadata for both of these items (that is, most conveniently a screenshot of the right-hand pane). The first one just looks like a metadata issue. Not sure why the 2nd one wouldn't print a DOI, though.
  • jdonaldson
    Thanks for the speedy reply! I'm going crazy!

    Chicago 18th, author-date.

    It is strange. When I go in to zotero itself, and hit "create bibliography from item" and copy to clipboard then paste, it is 100 percent correct. But not in my biblio.

    Here's the right-hand pane for both citations.


    https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u4190904/z9ci8x90gbytb4b092n5.png

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u4190904/w9ecnpmfa3yr0ydzkbv0.png
  • adamsmith
    How about inserting the citation in a new document with the Word add-on? I'd assume those look right, too. If that's the case, the ones above are generated from old metadata in the Word documents, likely from an (originally duplicate) item that you have since then deleted in your Zotero library. You'd have to reinsert those. No idea why this would have started to happen recently, though -- we did update the styles, but as you note, they're not actually the problem since bibliographies generated from Zotero directly look right.
  • jdonaldson
    Thanks Adam (cool name!),

    But I'm not sure I understand. I used the word add-on originally. But can I copy the entire article to a new word document? Is there any way to delete the fake library it seems to be referencing?

    these problems are all new. One hint: I just reformatted my computer, though I don't know why that would cause these problems. Thanks!
  • jdonaldson
    Or are you saying add all the references one by one to a blank word doc? That would be, well, tough.
  • jdonaldson
    They really seemed to come out of the blue. I can check an old computer. They even seem to be updating whenever I open old versions of the same paper—updating the bibliography incorrectly as I open it. But I'm not sure.
  • adamsmith
    For a start, I'd want you to test inserting a couple of broken ones to a blank document. If that works, you'd have to replace broken one manually in the main document. The data it's referencing is stored directly in the document, you can't replace it.

    When you reformatted the computer, how did you transfer/store the Zotero library?
  • jdonaldson
    The blank one works! But then I tried to add the broken reference anew in my old document. And it still comes out wrong.

    I need to delete the old internal citations and then re-add them? Can't I just copy and paste the entire doc into a fresh word doc?
  • jdonaldson
    I also tried to "unlink" the document. And then when I added the same references again, it worked. But that means manually replacing all the references in the entire doc?
  • dstillman
    You're likely choosing from the Cited section of the search results in the citation dialog, which uses the version already in the document. You need to insert from the relevant library section.
  • dstillman
    And you didn't answer the question of how you transferred your Zotero library when you reformatted your computer. If you just copied your Zotero data directory, or synced from the new, empty library, existing links to citations would still work. If you did something else, like exporting and reimporting, they wouldn't. Imported items would have no connection to any existing citations.

    From a previous post of yours, you appear to have ended up with a duplicate set of items in February, likely after an export and reimport (and then perhaps a sync that pulled down your previous data).
  • jdonaldson
    Sorry about not answering that question. For this one, I didn't backup. After formatting computer, I simply restored from the library stored on line.

    The previous post—I don't remember importing or exporting. From my perspective, all of a sudden, everything duplicated. I solved that by sorting by "Date Added" and deleting thousands of entries. Duplicate libraries persist—half of empty, half are correct. Still, with that previous issue, I never had a biblio problem like this.

    Thanks for troubleshooting. I corrected the ones that were faulty. I hope to avoid this issue in the future. Any way to NOT include the "Cited section" when searching? It would be ideal if I can just find the source and add it, not have to search among the answers to distinguished between "Cited sections" and "relevant library sections" —if I'm understanding you correctly.
  • jdonaldson
    I really appreciate the fast responses.
  • jdonaldson
    In short, I think I "synced from the new, empty library"
  • dstillman
    The only way to get duplicates is by exporting and importing. Again, you did that (at least) in February. As I say, that can include exporting/importing and syncing on different computers (e.g., importing a previous export but later syncing the original data). That's why you had one set of items with their original Date Added values and another set all from the same date in February.
    I solved that by sorting by "Date Added" and deleting thousands of entries.
    Deleting the new set — i.e., the one from February — would be the correct way to fix that, but if deleted the other set, or if you had already cited the February items, you'd end up with broken citations.

    The way to avoid this is to avoid exporting and reimporting your library. There's no other way it happens, so if you don't do that, this isn't something you need to worry about.
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