Citations are mysteriously changing

stvtron@gmail.com
We've noticed that, over the past few days, that some of our citations have been mysteriously changed.

Has anyone else noticed this? I've searched the forum, but haven't found this error in any discussions under troubleshooting or other categories. Also, it is mishandling IBID, inserting it where it shouldn't and not when it should.

We're using Zotero plug-in for Firefox and Word (Office 2008) for Mac OSX (10.6.8).

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

We're almost ready to give up on Zotero and purchase Endnote, I'm sorry to say.
  • ajlyon
    We need more details on what exactly is happening-- are these citations in your library? Or in documents produced using the Word / OpenOffice plugins? Are they from a personal library or a group library? Is syncing set up on the computers showing this? If so, does the information in the online version of the library at zotero.org also show changes?

    The ibid issue is presumably separate-- but you'll also need to explain precisely where it's showing up and not showing up. Since the issue is separate, and it might need troubleshooting by different folks, please open a second thread for the ibid issues, detailing exactly what's happening. Ibid placement can be confusing, and it's possible that you're using a style that isn't set up right.
  • fbennett
    @stvtron,

    I'd be interested to learn more about your ibid problems. We haven't had any complaints from other quarters, so if you do start that other thread I'm curious about the details.
  • stvtron@gmail.com
    These are citations in the Zotero library that I've created from sources found with Firefox as my browser. We're not running syncing as we're only doing this locally on one Mac.

    Also, the first instance of one of the citations is only showing the short form, not the full listing, as if the citation has been used before.

    Word and Zotero locked up today, which is a first, as well.
  • stvtron@gmail.com
    ok, we noticed that the pref was set to use short form, not full form for the citations, so that's cleared up. But the Ibid problem persists. Strange.
  • adamsmith
    Could you specify the problem more? Which style are you actually using?
    Describe some situations in which you see ibid when it shouldn't be there. Ditto with situations where no ibid is displayed - we'd just want a maximum amount of context to understand what's goingon.
    Also, have you used the show editor function in the plugin?
  • fbennett
    @stvtron,

    Also, it sounds as though you might be working with a locally customize or created style. Have you validated it?
  • sbaumgarten
    I'm having the same problem with the citations. I'm working on a 65 page Word document, and I just noticed that all of the citations are wrong. I'm using the Zotero plug-in for Firefox (v. 5.0.1) and Word (Office 2011) for Mac OSX (10.6.8).

    The citations are from sources that I've entered manually into my personal Zotero library. There don't appear to be any changes to the sources in the library itself (either online or in the plug-in). I do have automatic syncing turned on.

    I've been saving a new version of the Word doc every day, and from looking back at the older versions it appears that the problem with the citations started all of a sudden on 8/5/11. I didn't change any settings or do anything else I can think of that might have caused the problem.

    Thanks for your help.
  • fbennett
    @sbaumgarten,

    As I, ajlyon and adamsmith have written above, we need more detail. "All of the citations are wrong" doesn't give us much to go on.
  • sbaumgarten
    @fbennett,

    Upon closer inspection, I found that the citation problem only begins about 2/3 of the way through the document. I also realized that what's happening is that at that point one of my citations has somehow been erroneously duplicated, and all the subsequent citations from that point on are "shifted down" by one. For example, if the sequence of citations should be A - B - C - D - E, instead the sequence is A - A - B - C - D and so on.

    A few other details: The style I'm using is APA 6th edition. I don't appear to be having the ibid problem that stvtron is having.
  • fbennett
    edited August 8, 2011
    Sounds like a broken document, rather than a problem with Zotero or the processor (i.e. in the sense of this being caused directly by a bug -- not denying that you face a problem). Have you tried these steps?

    http://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_troubleshooting#debugging_broken_documents
  • sbaumgarten
    I followed the suggestion in that link to make a copy of the document and change the bibliographic style, and that seems to have fixed the problem. Thanks for your help!

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