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error: citation/ bibliography is wrongly placed in index area, please delete the placed citation/ bibliography in index area

Anonymous
2018-12-10T16:43:04+00:00

Hello community,

I am having problems with word and/ or mendeley. It keeps showing me the following error: "citation/ bibliography is wrongly placed in index area, please delete the placed citation/ bibliography in index area" when trying to edit or insert a citation.

any suggestions on how to solve the problem?

Kind Regards,

Eva

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-12-18T19:17:06+00:00

    I had the same problem, just after the update - immediately after the update.

    I wasn't having any citation highlighted, but rather a Prism graph. I took someone's advice and turned on field code by pressing alt+F9. I found this bit of code: "{ ADDIN }" appended to the end of the field code for my embedded graph. Once I deleted that item the document became functional again. I just replicated the same fix in a backup version of the file I had made, it really is just that piece of code.

    It looks like there are other pieces of code containing "ADDIN", based on a ctl+f search, one for each of my citations. But this { ADDIN } was the only one that was sitting alone, with nothing else in its curly braces. 

    So here are the steps: 

    1. Hit ALT+F9
    2. Search for ADDIN (I didn't get a result for { ADDIN, only the letters themselves worked)
    3. Delete the search result that is { ADDIN } alone
    4. Try to refresh your bibliography to see if it's fixed!

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-12-14T11:05:17+00:00

    I managed to correct the error. Hope it will help others.

    Every time I received the window with an error, Word was pointing on a particular piece of text with some citation that has a mistake (too bad it's not highlighted). You need to identify which citation is corrupted and delete it (just copy different parts of your text into a new word document + compile bibliography again, so that way you can eliminate the corrupted citation).

    100+ people found this answer helpful.
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  1. Anonymous
    2018-12-14T14:31:41+00:00

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5AjgYgm0Hk

    My fault was somewhere in the abbreviations, which I linked all.

    This is how I solved it:

    ctrl + h --> window pops up: type in: ^d XE --> click "replace all" and than my problem was solved :)

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-12-13T11:27:50+00:00

    thank you! 

    I just solved the problem. i just deleted all the linked index for the abbreviations. than it worked again. :)

    Everything that started with "XE..."

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-12-15T16:24:11+00:00

    I am doing my Ph.D. Thesis, 

    so far I have over 500 citations. it is not possible for me to simply delete all the citations and make them all over again. 

    this problem happens exactly after I updated the Mendeley to the latest version. 

    if anyone has any idea on how to solve this problem I will be grateful. 

    Dear co-PhD candindate and all Mendelay users.

    I was in a similar situation and found a solution. The problem in my case was past Endnote field codes (possibly other citing database may cause this issue). Before switching to Mendeley i used Endonte for citing. Unfortunately, even after uninstalling Endnote, Word keeps the Endnote field codes for the existing references made with Endnote. 

    The solution for me was to show all field codes in the word text (by pressing Alt +F9), trace all Endnote field codes (with control+f) and then manually remove them. Afterwards, Mendeley citing works again so you can replace them the ones you deleted using it.

    If you still have Endnote, it has an option to replace Endnote made citings with text. I haven't tried it but i assume with this action also, Mendelay citing will start functioning again

    Important note!: Please keep a backup of you PhD in case of something goes wrong.

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