We’re hitting an issue with the Word Plugin and wondering if it’s a known problem and if there’s a good workaround.
We have a manuscript in a docx file which was created in Word, and has refs added via the PaperPile for Word plugin.
This file is stored in Google Drive (and mounted as a folder on our Macs). This works fine when users edit it exclusively via Word. The problem comes if any of the users who have access via that share happen to open it via the Google Drive web interface. When they do that, it opens in Google Docs, and edits are made anywhere in the document, it saves back over the docx file. From that point forward, when reopening it in Word (locally), the references cannot be found by the paperpile plugin (it gives a message ‘We could not find any PaperPile references in this documnent’)
This is a problem b/c the web interface for Google Drive opens any hosted docx in its web editor, which triggers this problem. Is there a way to keep Google Docs from squashing references inside docx files?
Welcome to our forum, @jki! There’s an extra step in the conversion from GDocs to Word (and viceversa) which is required for citations to be editable on the other environment. Once downloaded, open the document in Word and click the Paperpile tab > Convert from > Google Docs:
On that same menu you can see the option to Export to Google Docs. Please let us know if you run into any issues there or need anything else.
I did see that option, but it doesn’t quite cover my situation. In our case we have a file which never stops being a docx – it’s made in Word, references added in Word with the PP plugin, edited with Word, and things are fine. All this time, it is being stored in Google Drive.
The problem comes from the “Office Editing” mode of Google Drive, where it allows a user to make changes to a docx file in-place, without converting it to GDocs. (some info here –Work with Microsoft Office files - Google Workspace Learning Center ). This is the default action when you open a docx file via the Google Drive web interface. When we do this, and make any edit, even to text that’s not part of a reference (say add a space to the top of the file), the modified docx loses all the references the next time it’s loaded up in Word.
Hoping there’s a workaround, or if not, it’d be great if you could bring this to your team’s attention – it’s been a bit of a pain since this “Office Editing” mode has recently become the default behavior for our institution’s Google suite.
Thanks for the clarification, Jacob. Since the “Office Editing” mode in GDocs was rolled out right around the time our Word plugin was first released as well, we did not consider supporting this additional environment would be necessary – nor had there been any demand for it until now. I’m afraid this means the only workaround for your institution’s case would be to open the document back in Word or convert it to GDocs as indicated in my previous reply.
Although citing in this editing mode might not be feasible for us to consider at the moment, I will open a new topic with your request on our tracker for the team to look into further down the line.
FYI, we have had the exact same issue. While collaborating on a Word doc, if anyone edits it through the google doc interface, it destroys the Word paperpile references, and they have to be re-inserted all over again. This makes it hard to collaborate on a Word doc with paperpile.
Welcome to our forum, @Carlo_Maley! Unfortunately editing Word documents in Google Docs (without going through the conversion process mentioned above in this thread) is still not possible, nor something feasible for us to prioritize working on at the moment. GDocs does not support the special fields we use in Word to hold citation data, so the fields are simply replaced with plain text and thus not recognized when opening the document in Word again.
It is possible to use GDocs / GDrive as a backup or sharing point as long as the option pictured below (in Drive settings) is unchecked.
We have had the same issue. Not only has it been a HUGE headache to work around. It has taken quite some time to diagnose the issue… multiple rounds of going back to the last version of the docx with functional citations and re-updating the document with all recent changes only to have them mysteriously break again when a collaborator goes to edit the document. I would try to find a way to throw an error when someone tries to open a docx containing Paperpile citations in the Google Drive editing mode.
Same here. I recently purchased a Paperpile subscription because of its vast journal formatting list, ease of capturing citations online and Google docs addon so I could work from anywhere on my papers. These are all superb options for a citation manager software application. However, after completing the first paper, I exported the file to MS Word (.docx) format to submit. All the citations were showing in a weird weblink format. Then, I converted the citations from Google Drive format as recommended here, and then pushed the “update citations and bibliography” button on Word Paperfile tab. Boom! All the references are gone! I tried multiple different ways to bring the citations back with no success. The interesting thing is that the citations show in numbers in the text. But the list would not show at the end of the paper. Honestly, I don’t know where to go from here. I am thinking about re-entering all the references in the Word document manually. But this would be double work on my side which with my busy schedule is both stressing and frustrating. I really hope that there is a better way to fix this issue. Because I don’t really want to cancel my subscription and go back to EndNote due to many positive aspects of Paperpile that I mentioned above. Any guide would be appreciated.
Welcome to our forum, @y.jahangiri, and thank you for your kind words about Paperpile! Google Docs and Word use different field encoding methods, so the way we add citations to each also differs. This means you can add Paperpile citations while working in both editors, but a conversion step is required when switching from one to the other. After saving a Google document to .docx format, open it in Word and from the Paperpile tab, click Settings and Tools > Convert from > Paperpile Google Docs.
It seems that your in-text citations were converted successfully but your bibliography was not? Both or none should succeed, so this is strange.
Did you get an error message after converting the Google Docs citations to Word citations? If so, our word specialist would need the logs so that he can investigate, or ideally, the original Google Doc so we can try the conversion on our side.
To share the logs with us, in the Paperpile menu in Word, go to Settings and Tools > Send Debug Information . It should reveal a folder with a file named paperpile-logs.txt . You can attach the file here, in our in-app messenger, or you can email support@paperpile.com. If you decide to share the original Google Doc with us, please email it to the same address, or contact us in our in app messenger.
I believe I’ve found the solution to this issue. After converting the citations in the Word document, they appear as a single-line code at the end of the document. To display the reference list, right-click on the code and select the ‘Toggle Field Codes’ option.
Thank you for your response @suzanne. This forum only supports image file uploads, such as the .jpeg format, so I’m unable to upload the file here. Instead, I have attached it to an email sent to support@paperpile.com. Hopefully, we can identify and resolve the issue soon.
Thank you for sharing the screenshot, @y.jahangiri. I’m happy that the reference list has appeared for you now. One possible cause is that you may have had the “Show field codes instead of their values” option selected in Word when converting the citations to Word. In any case, what you did (right clicking and clicking Toggle Field Codes) should always work if this happens again.
