A CSL citation field became corrupted

tacitojr · 2026-07-16T14:46:43+00:00

A CSL citation field became corrupted. The visible citation contains only Helms et al. (2020), Stone et al. (2021), and Washif et al. (2025), but the underlying citationItems still include Forbes et al. (2022), causing the bibliography to retain an unused reference. Removing Forbes through the citation editor does not persist after Refresh. Is this a known CSL field corruption bug?

tacitojr · 2026-07-16T15:04:37+00:00

The 'Selected Items' panel always shows the same reference (Forbes et al., 2022), even when opening newly created citations (e.g., Stone et al., 2022 or Currier et al., 2026) in a brand-new Word document. However, the citation shown in the top citation bar is correct.

dstillman · 2026-07-16T15:07:32+00:00

We'd have to see a document excerpt to say for sure, but it just sounds like you made a manual edit to the visible citation. Zotero would've asked you whether you wanted to keep changes or revert them and let it update. Customize the citation via Add/Edit Citation should prompt to revert changes. If that's not happening, we'd want to debug that, but you can also just delete and recreate the citation.

(If you edited to use narrative citations, use Omit Author instead.)

The 'Selected Items' panel always shows the same reference (Forbes et al., 2022), even when opening newly created citations

That's just the item you have selected in Zotero.

tacitojr · 2026-07-16T17:46:14+00:00

Hi David,
Thank you for your reply.
As requested, I have attached a small document excerpt ("Test BUG") containing the first pages of the manuscript and the bibliography where the unexpected Forbes et al. (2022) entry still appears.
Please let me know if you need any additional information or a different excerpt.
Thank you very much for your help.

dstillman · 2026-07-16T18:00:55+00:00

You can email a file to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread.

tacitojr · 2026-07-20T19:01:29+00:00

[Merged back into this thread — D.S.]

Dear David,
I hope you are doing well.
I just wanted to follow up regarding the Test BUG.docx file that I emailed to support@zotero.org in reference to the forum discussion below:
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/515649#Comment_515649
Could you please confirm that the file was received?
If necessary, I would be happy to resend it or provide a larger document excerpt.
Thank you very much for your time and assistance.
Best regards,
Tácito P. Souza-Junior

adomasven · 2026-07-21T05:53:47+00:00

The file you have sent in does not contain a bibliographic entry for Forbes et al. 2022.

tacitojr · 2026-07-22T16:24:23+00:00

Thank you for checking.
That's interesting, because the original manuscript still generates the Forbes et al. (2022) bibliography entry on my computer after Refresh, whereas the Test BUG excerpt apparently does not.
It seems the problem may be limited to the original manuscript rather than the excerpt.
If it would be helpful, I can send the original manuscript privately by email for inspection.

dstillman · 2026-07-22T16:25:39+00:00

You can if you want, or you create an excerpt that still reproduces the problem. It would not happen with the excerpt you sent.

adomasven · 2026-07-23T09:01:30+00:00

@tacitojr There seem to be a couple of things that have happened that may have caused the issue:
1. You may have corrected the metadata of a Helms authored item to be attributed to Forbes in your Zotero library.
2. You later tried to remove the old Helms reference by directly editing the citation in the text of the document, instead of by using the Add/Edit Citation, and when prompted for whether you want to keep those changes, you chose yes.

Particularly, you have 2 items that are modified: "(Stone et al., 2021; Washif et al., 2025)" on page 8. You can fix them by manually using the Add/Edit Citation button on them.

We will make finding these kind of issues easier in the future, but for now you can manually find them by temporarily enabling Word Field Code display and searching in the document for the offending item author name or other metadata.

tacitojr · 2026-07-23T13:04:21+00:00

Thank you very much.
I followed your instructions.
I removed the hidden Forbes et al. (2022) entry from the citation you identified (Stone et al., 2021; Washif et al., 2025), saved the document, and performed a Zotero Refresh.
However, Forbes et al. (2022) is still present in the bibliography.
This suggests that there is at least one additional citation field in the manuscript that still contains Forbes internally.
Would it be possible for you to identify the remaining field(s)? I would greatly appreciate your help.

adomasven · 2026-07-23T13:22:45+00:00

There are two identical "(Stone et al., 2021; Washif et al., 2025)" citations on page 8. You need to remove the Forbes item from both of them.

tacitojr · 2026-07-23T16:33:24+00:00

Thank you very much.
That solved the problem.
There were indeed two identical citation fields containing the hidden Forbes item. After removing Forbes from both citations and refreshing the document, the bibliography was corrected.
Thank you for your help!