Problems with Zotero 2.1.6

btrav
I downloaded Zotero 2.1.6 and now most of the corrections that I had made in my footnotes have disappeared. Most of the titles are in French and a square appears instead of some of the accents. That was true before and I had gone through and made all the corrections. Now, Zotero has put the squares back in and has also put a square in sometimes where there's just a space.
I had everything corrected in a 325-page dissertation and now I will have to do most of the work - plus extra- all over again! I am in despair.
  • btrav
    More problems with 2.1.6. It erased parts of my footnotes as well! How can I get rid of this thing??
  • fbennett
    @btrav: Have you preserved a separate copy of your dissertation document?
  • fbennett
    @btrav: Second question: do you have track changes turned on in your word processor?
  • btrav
    I just realized that most of the dissertation is saved - Whew! (Unfortunately, not the chapter I was just working on. It should be - but that is a different technical issue.)
    Track changes is on because I'm adding the changes that my advisor has sent. However, I believe that it is on only when I'm looking at her document. My document is not tracking changes. Would having her document and mine on the desktop at the same time affect Zotero?

    Thanks so much!
  • fbennett
    I don't know how track changes settings work in Word, but from forum discussions I know that it's important to turn it off (and accept all changes if it was used previously) when a Word document is connected to Zotero.

    The reason is that Track Changes will store multiple copies of the fields in which Zotero stores citation data (every time a field is changed), and this confuses the plugin. If citations jump locations or things break at a low level, this is often the cause. It might be worth checking carefully to be sure it is turned off in the copy of your thesis that you are editing (I'm sorry that I don't know how that's done, I don't use Word very much).

    So long as you can make the setting separately in the two documents, there should be no problem keeping your supervisor's copy open on the desktop, though.

    If Zotero is inserting corrupted characters into your document, that's not good and we'd like to know more about what causes it. But for a start, let's explore the method you used to fix the text the first time. Did you edit the text directly in the citation through the word processor, or did you open the Zotero plugin and edit the text through the "Show editor" widget?
  • btrav
    I edited directly in the citation in Word. Unfortunately, I am an utter techno-peasant and didn't even know that there was another option.
  • fbennett
    Okay, that's the source of the overwrites problem; Zotero controls the fields that contain the citations, and it will overwrite them every time it refreshes. If you edit citations through the "Show editor" widget, Zotero will remember the changes; but in that case, the target citation will not change to Ibid, etc., as appropriate. You can give Zotero control over a citation again by editing the citation and clicking on the "Hide editor" buttion -- but then your edits will be overwritten for that citation.

    To add comments around a cite, use the "Prefix" and "Suffix" fields in the citation editor plugin.
  • btrav
    Thanks!

    So, given that I have approximately 1000 footnotes (none of them edited using the widget), is my best option to just stop using Zotero at this point and do any new footnotes or changes "manually"?
  • fbennett
    edited April 17, 2011
    That's what I would do. On a _copy_ of your document(s) before your manual edits were overwritten, try clicking the "Remove Field Codes" in the Zotero word processor plugin. That should give you a confirmation popup. Clicking OK will freeze your bibliography and footnotes in their current form.

    You can still use Zotero to compose bibliography sections to paste into the document, of course.

    Good luck!

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