I have checked through the databases in Ref Manager (v. 11) and have deleted duplicated references using the Batch command. However, I still have a problem where if I use the same reference more than once it is cited as two or more separate references rather than one (i.e., XXX et al., 2001 iscited in the text 2 times, it will will appear as XXX et al., 2001a and XXX et al., 2001b). In addition, these same references are cited separately in the References at the end of the text rather than only once. Is there a way to get rid of this automatically without having to go over each reference where this occur and re-insert ? (I am working with an considerable large document).
only thing i did different was to"accept" all my tracked-changes in my Word 2007 doc, and then turn OFF tracked changes (TRK),
it has worked OK since i did that.
apparently, in my computer, the biblio generating process got corrupted and generated sev’l bibliographies for the same ref ID #, and different citation #'s throught the Word 2007 doc, if you generate the bibliography with tracked-changes still in the document and with tracked changes (TRK) still ON.
don’t know if, however, t/c has anything to do with why the duplicate citations, and numbers in text changing all around, or not.
but, if you have t/c in your document, try to do a test " doc" by saving AS, to another file name, and then “accepting” all changes and then turn off TRK - before - you generate bibliography.
I have the same problem, but the solution suggested did not work:still a and b in my text. Anyone else a suggestion how to get rid of invisible duplicates?
This problem usually comes from the fact that you worked with the WORD document without having opened the database at the same time. Then, you probably inserted a reference that was already in the text. But because the database was not open, you actually inserted the reference from what is the WORD file, not the database. As a result , you now have two references which will be considered distinct when generating the bibliography.
The only way to correct the situation is to go reference by reference in the text (use the “Find” function of WORD) to identify each occurence of this duplicated reference (say, if you have John et al 2006a and John et al 2006b, look at every occurence of “John et al 2006”). If your references are by number in th text, you must identify the duplicates by their number (but see later about that).
Once you have identified a reference, make a right click on the field to see its ID number and check whether that that reference with this ID number is in the database (do not forget to open the database). If it is, leave it like that. If it has another ID number, delete it, and then reinsert it BUT look carefully that the reference you insert comes from the database, NOT from the text. You will see this as follows: if they are 2 or more entries for the same referene in the Insert Citation dialog box, select them one by one (but do not isert) and look at the bottom of this dialog box, where you will see where the reference comes from (Database: <name> where name is either the name of the database file or the name of the WORD file). Reinsert only the reference that comes from the Database, NOT from the WORD file. Once you will have removed all duplicates coming from the WORD file, the Insert Citation dialog box will only show the reference from the Datbase. At that point, you kow that you have done your job. Then, generate a new bibliography and it should be correct (unless you have missed one or two occurences…).
Caveat: if your references are by number in the text, you will decrement the number by 1 each time you remove a duplicate. You, therefore, will need to generate a new bibliography each time to find out the new number of the next cuplicate. For that reason, it is better to do what I suggested above using (for the time being) an output file (.os) that shows names in text (say John et al. 2006) than one showing [1] … You may then revert back to the output file you were using when regenerating the final bibliography.
I know that what I said seems long and tedious, but is is the only way I found to suppress those “duplicates”. The main message is, however: NEVER open your WORD document without opening at the same time the correspondig database. This will avoid all problem of this nature.
Seems reasonable to me. The ID numbers are identical, and indeed, it is possible to choose between two identical references in the insert box, so I have to check wether they are linked to the word file or the RM file. Thanks, makes sense. I will never open a word file without RM any longer.
For what it’s worth, I just ran into this problem and seem to have solved it by “revert to original text” followed by “generate biobliography.” (Word 2003, RefMan 11.0.1) After manually fixing the first paragraph, I figured it was worth a try.
Dhorita is correct. This issue happens when your document gets “out of sync” with your database, and is always resolved by reverting to original text (or “unformatting citations” if you have 12 and Word 2007/2010) and generating the bibliography again.
Hopefully this will be helpful knowledge if it happens again!