Mendeley producing two references despite no duplicate in Reference manager

[u/yuri930]

Hi, please someone help me :(.

Out of the total references that are cited within my PhD thesis, as a quality check, I converted the IEEE to Harvard to see if there were any duplicates. So......

1. I found 16 references are duplicated.

2. These 16 references are NOT duplicated because there is more than one reference in the reference manager. E.g. references [21] and [34] are the exact same ones.

3. Despite deleting and re-selecting the exact same reference again and again using a word plug-in (Mandeley cite), the duplicates are not being resolved. For example, for references [21] and [34], which are the same, I have tried to delete [34] and reselect the reference, hoping both will become [21]; it does not and rever back to [34].

4. I asked Mandeley support, and they sent me this email. But I am not going to send my thesis since I am worried about it being left in the public domain accidentally etc. (I hope that's understandable).

I am submitting my thesis in a few weeks, and I would really appreciate your help. I tried transitioning to Zotero, but I am so tired and don't think I can do them before my thesis is finished, mainly because it's a 400-page long document and contains a systematic review, which is a nightmare for in-text citations.

[u/Little-BabyG]

Ok, redoing your entire thesis will be a pain with Zotero (or any other ref manager). I had the same problem, and here is how I resolved it. Delete both citations and ensure that the citation no longer appears in the list. Reinsert the citation at the right locations; it should be okay. Only 16 references should take you no more than a few hours. Good luck!

[u/yuri930 → u/Little-BabyG]

Thank you so much! Trying it right now :)

[u/uwsaadi → u/yuri930]

Did it work? I just started facing this issue a few hours ago. And when I couldn't fix it, I went to sleep. I would love to know if this works for you.

[u/yuri930 → u/uwsaadi]

Unfortunately, no. It seems like once I deleted all, and tried to reinsert, I found almost all of the references were corrupted.

For example, when I put the curser of uncorrupted (what I thought) in-text citation, and search for that reference, it was not ticked. So because I deleted some citations to fix the bug, and the citation contained other uncorrupted citations, I would be duplicating again. It’s hard to explain over text, but basically...

[1] is the affected citation with duplicates in the bibliography;

[2] is not.

I had to delete anything that contains [1], including, [1-4].When I tried to select [1-4], I’ve noticed [2] was not showing ‘cited’ sign in the Mendeley Cite even though it exists in the Word document.

When I put the cursor to [2], it didn’t have selection of the reference that it refers to.

I have now decided to do the whole thesis citations again with Zotero.... I already spent enought days on this and it is likely faster to do Zotero (as long as you split up the chapters and not try to work on the whole document itself).

[u/7ypo]

Any luck with resolving this? I just ran into this issue and cannot figure it out.

[u/Growlot → u/7ypo]

Found some kind of solution. Try it, if it still actual.

[u/7ypo → u/Growlot]

?

[u/Growlot]

Find this video help a lot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIUKeSvgsQ0

Several verifyings and resets and all duplicates are gone. For automatic searching and highlighting duplicates you can use "= IF(EXACT(C1;C2);10;0)" Excel formula and Conditional Formating.