Dashed underlining does not disappear after refreshing

MasterGrob
Hello Community,
I currently have the problem that after adding many citations, the updating speed slowed down. After some time with that, Zotero advised me to stop automatic updating to increase the speed again. That worked very well. After adding multiple sources (shown with a dashed underlining), I tried to refresh one time to update the whole document. It took 15 minutes and the dashed lines are still there. I then changed my document preferences to activate automatic updates again, that also took 15 minutes and did not change anything. After activating automatic updates again, I tried to refresh it again and it still does not work.
I also tried to add new citations into my document, which then show no dashed underlining.
I am using a MacBook.

I really hope that somebody can give me advise with that! Thanks a lot in advance!
  • adomasven Zotero Team
    You probably edited those citations manually. To get them to refresh, put your cursor in them, then press Add/Edit Citation, click Yes in the dialog that appears, then click confirm in the citation dialog.
  • MasterGrob
    Thank you for your answer but unfortunately not. The dashed lines started appearing after switching automatic refreshing off. I turned it on now again and deleted the respective citations. After newly adding them, they are included normally. The problem is just that every citation takes around 20 seconds to load. Since I am soon done with my master, I will just keep it that way for now unless there might be a solution to increase the processing speed without having those dashed lines. Thanks a lot!
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    edited 3 days ago
    If you do what Adomas says in one of the affected citations, do you get a dialog saying that the citation has been modified?

    If not, we'd have to see a Debug ID for a Refresh that doesn't remove the dashed underlines. I'd guess that the refresh just hadn't finished yet.
  • MasterGrob
    I don’t know if you can access my protocols but on my end, there are no error messages popping up. It just takes 10-15 minutes for a refresh and then asks me for example if I want to keep citations that I manually changed but doesn’t remove the dashed lines from the citations that weren’t synced yet.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    edited 3 days ago
    If you're getting a prompt about modified citations, it sounds like it's exactly what Adomas says — you manually edited those, so they can't be updated, and that includes the underlining. Did you try what Adomas suggested for a single affected citation?
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    (Generally you should never manually edit citations. You want to customize them instead.)
  • MasterGrob
    edited 3 days ago
    I am not sure if I misunderstand you but my problem is not that the in text citation does not work. It is about the literature references, which do not update or load the new sources, since automatic updating was off. After refreshing (single sources or the whole document) the dashed line stays there and the reference does not load. I tried what adomas advised me already yesterday before his answer but I can’t recreate it now, since I replaced every of those dashed citations. Could you maybe just clarify how the „normal process“ should look like?
    How I understood it:
    1. updating takes too long, I turn automatic refreshing off
    2. new citations appear with the dashed lines, indicting me that this source is not in the references yet
    3. I refresh the document and therefore load all references in and the dashed lines should disappear.

    Did I understand that right?
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    When automatic updating is off, you shouldn't have a reference list at all. Zotero replaces it with a placeholder sentence saying that you need to refresh to generate a bibliography.

    The dashed underlines are just showing you that the form of the citation may not be final — e.g., it may not be properly formatted as a subsequent citation in certain citation styles.

    In any case, what you describe is the correct process, but what Adomas is explaining is that citations you manually modify while they have an underline will never be updated in any way, including to clear the underline. If you're getting messages about modified citations when you refresh, it's likely that you're in the habit of modifying citations manually and that this is what's causing the underlines not to be going away.
  • MasterGrob
    Ahhh now I understand the issue. Thank you both a lot for explaining it! I will keep the in sentence citations unmodified until I refreshed everything and have automatic updates on again. After that I can manually change the citations so they fit to in sentence style.

    There is no way to directly add in text citation in the right style if I understand right? If there is, could you please be so kind and let me know how I can switch for each citation, in which citation style it will be added to the document.

    Again, thanks a lot!
  • adamsmith
    Could you provide an example of what you're currently editing?
    Do you mean turning (Smith 1776) into Smith (1776)? Use omit author for that and write Smith into the text https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_usage#customizing_citations
  • MasterGrob
    Yes, that is the exact case I mean. Excuse my poor research. Thank you a lot for your quick and efficient help!!!
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