Word processor plugin - Zotero refresh button messes things up

Nino
Hi guys!

After using the Zotero refresh button in both Open Office and Word plugin I noticed that Zotero now makes double entries in my bibliography assigning new numbers to articles I already cited in the same document. The enumeration gets messed up in the process, of course. This renders Zotero close to unusable for my purposes. Anyone who has a good idea what is going wrong here?

Interestingly, I made some changes do my Zotoro database, namely I deleted some double entries. Some of these doublettes might have been referenced in my article. How does the Zotero plugins handle references linked to entries that are deleted from the database? It seems these entries stay in the document until the reference gets deleted.

Any workarounds...?
  • Nino
    Hmm - strangely. After deleting one of the fields with multiple references in it, the enumeration seems back in place. However, when editing a reference and when pressing the "Show editor" button the enumeration is still sometimes wrong. F.ex. the editor might show "(45)", but the actual number in the document shown is (5). Sometimes the "Show editor" button shows nothing at all.
  • Nino
    Well, well...
    Seems like I am having a nice little monologue with myself here :D
    Latest update.
    Problem:
    You make a citation and the library item it references gets deleted later on (because it is a doublette in my case) Especially problematic, when you reference multiple library items in one citation.
    Because next time you cite the same article, a new, double bibliography entry will be created, instead of the old one is referenced twice.
    Solution:
    You need to go through all your references and delete/replace ALL invalid citations. Unfortunately, citations get not marked in any way when their library item gets deleted. They only way to fix this is:
    - Mark one citation after another (if you know which one is bugging you, just mark this one)
    - Edit citation
    - In the Add/edit Citation box:
    If you only cited 1 item check if any entry of your library is selected.
    If none is selected, this means this citation references no valid/existing library item, and you need select the right one to fix the problem.

    If you referenced more than 1 article in one citation, things are more difficult. All citations are still shown in the right box, and you cannot see which are valid or not.
    So for every reference in the right box you need to select it and then find the library entry that should match it in the left box. If the reference is right, then you won't be able to add the library entry another time (rightwards arrow button is greyed out). If you can, that means you must remove the entry (leftwards arrow button) and then add it again (rightwards arrow button).

    If have deleted several library entries, you might need to go through all citations in order to get things right again :/

    However, after such a malaise, the numbers you see when you press the "Show editor" button keep being wrong as previously described. A bug I would think. However, you should never edit your citations manually anyway. This will also mess things up for you :)
  • Nino
    Haha!

    As always there is an easy solution!

    After deleting double entries in your library:
    Empty the Trash! (in Zotero that is). Otherwise the old entries while not shown are kept in the database!
    Then push the "Zotero refresh" button in word / open office writer
    Zotero asks now for you to replace the dead references or to delete the citation.
    Nicely!
    However, when pressing the "Show editor" button afterwards, the numbers will still be wrong. Who cares as long as the actual numbers in the documents are right :)
  • meerutwala
    I've been having similar issues in my documents. It's a problem with Zotero's inability to detect duplicate entries, which I think they are working on. However, thanks for the tip to empty trash in Zotero. I didn't know that was causing the problem of double entries and messing up with the date of publications. I just emptied my trash and hope it will help streamline my data.
  • willsmithorg
    edited January 20, 2012
    Thanks for this thread Nino, I had an identical problem and clearing the trash fixed it. I guess really the zotero word plugin should flag a missing entry as soon as it goes into trash, to force you to fix it earlier.
  • mark
    Note that in Z version 3.0 beta, you can delete duplicates in the local library using the special "Duplicate Items" interface. This would probably prevent the trash problem from happening.

    Agree though that Zotero should flag entries as missing as soon as they are in the Trash.
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