Warning about editing local copy

I had a nasty surprise yesterday after spending MULTIPLE hours trying to fix the references because PaperPile doesn’t actually honor the proper capitalization, lowercase, etc rules for APA7. I discovered too late that I had edited the “local copies” of the references, and was so upset when I figured out the problem - This very tiny note at the bottom needs to be MUCH more obvious! It should popup a big warning the minute you start editing.

" Note: Citing a document from your personal Paperpile library will create a local copy specific to the Google Document. This copy will be updated if you update the original copy in your library.

However, as soon you or someone else edits the local copy of a Google Document any subsequent changes you make to the original copy in your library will not update (and thus overwrite) the local changes.
Also, changes made to the local copy by yourself or a collaborator will never propagate back to your library."

Sorry to read about the lost hours of work, @jdev. Your feedback has been noted by the team; since there’s a lot of new stuff / improvements on the works I think it wouldn’t be too complicated for this warning to get a makeover.

Regarding capitalization – we rely on the metadata coded on publisher sites, which is not always properly formatted. Style code can apply capitalization to anything lowercase but must assume that anything uppercase is a proper noun. Although at the moment there’s no direct way to correct this (besides trying to Auto Update, Shift-A), we will soon be introducing the ability to bulk edit library items and an auto-capitalization tool for titles (as mentioned in this other thread).

Thanks! I have another problem related to this. When I tried to fix one of my entries “Allspaw, 2015” (Trade-offs under pressure), of course it was one that I had edited the local copy for. To resolve this, I removed ALL in text citations of the paper, then paperfile formatted, then tried to re-add the citations It REFUSES to let me pick from my library and only shows me “references from this document” but there aren’t any because I removed them, so why doesn’t it let me choose from library? Regardless, I expect to be able to pick from my library no matter what, Paperpile shouldn’t prevent me from picking from my library, even if I have a reference in the doc. Screen Shot 2023-02-04 at 2.47.06 PM

@jdev deleting all instances of an in-text citation will remove the reference from the text and bibliography, but not from the document’s backend (View all references page). In order to fully remove it, click Delete under each entry listed in that page.

Thank you. This is not obvious and I wonder if this could somehow be easier. If I delete an in text citation, and do a paperpile format, what would be the purpose of keeping this in the ‘backend’? Why wouldn’t paperpile just delete that for me?

My other comment was that “I expect to be able to pick from my library no matter what, Paperpile shouldn’t prevent me from picking from my library, even if I have a reference in the doc.”