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#1 Zotero Guide

Unlink Zotero Citations from a Document

1. To enable your document and Zotero to communicate with each other, Zotero inserts links within your document so that your citations can be updated and refreshed as needed.  You can tell the links are in place when you click on an in-text citation or the bibliography and see the items are highlighted in grey.  Sometimes it is necessary to remove those codes, for example if a journal editor requests that manuscripts be submitted with codes/links removed or in a plain text, or if you are working with a collaborator who may be using a different citation management tool.  To remove the links, click the Unlink Citations icon on the Zotero word processing toolbar. 

Unlink citations option in the Zotero word processing toolbar

This action cannot be undone, so before doing this, it is a good practice to always save two versions of the document – one with the links intact and one with the links removed.  This way if you want to add more citations to your paper or make any other changes, you can always do so in the version of the document with the Zotero links still intact.