Citation format keeps reverting after inserting into Mellel

[tonywatkins]

I'm writing something at the moment which doesn't use my normal bibliography/citation format. Under the Biblio menu, I've set the default format to the new format. At the bottom of the display pane, it's set to show the formatted citation and bibliography entry in the new format.

But then I insert a citation into a Mellel 5 footnote (I don't need to include a bibliography for this context, just full citations in the footnotes). Then I click the scan document button, and the citation is completed using my previous style, not the new one. When I click back to Bookends, the display pane has reverted to showing the previous style. At the moment, all I can think to do is make a backup of my previous biblio style, change it to how I need it to be, and then revert to the original when I've finished this piece. The trouble with that solution is that tomorrow I will be back on my PhD work needing to use my normal style.

I'm sure I'm missing something obvious but I can't find it, and I can see nothing in the Bookend user guide that helps me. Any suggestions, please?

[Jon]

I don't know the cause. If select a third format, does it stick? That is, is the problem specific to your format?

Jon
Sonny Software

[tonywatkins]

No it doesn't. I simplified things slightly in my initial post in that the new format is no. 3. I have a primary format (Harvard Anglia) for my academic work that I use for the vast majority of my writing. Never had a problem with it. I created a format (TW) for my non-academic work, which is the one it keeps reverting back to. Then there's the new one I mentioned in my original post which was a copy of TW that I created yesterday for this specific piece of work. Should I delete the TW format and the new one and create them again? Or reinstall Bookends?

[tonywatkins]

I presume Mellel has no control over what format the citations are created in? I can't see anything that would suggest that.

[Jon]

Please contact tech support: support@sonnysoftware.com

Jon
Sonny Software

[tonywatkins]

I've emailed Jon with the results of some testing I've done, but I'll summarise my finding here in case it helps someone else who run into the same issue.

It turns out that the issue arises from the first time of scanning a document to format the citations and bibliography. When doing so, one gets an option about generating a bibliography or not, with the referencing format to be used. Whether or not one generates a bibliography, the format showing in that window is the one that the document uses from that point on.

So I'd run into a problem because the document I was struggling with had originally used one referencing format – but without a generated bibliography - and I could not switch to a new format. Every time I tried – from within Bookends (setting biblio > default format), it failed and the formatted reference in the display pane reverted to the previous format. Because there is no bibliography, I could see no reason why it was stuck with the original format. I realised what was going on when it occurred to me that my academic documents were continuing to use Harvard – and that I could not change the format for them. When I created a new document, inserted a couple of citations, and scanned it for the first time, the format displayed in the option window for generating a bibliography was the one it was stuck with.

End result: it's an easy fix. Unscan the document, scan it again, and when given the option to generate a bibliography, set the new format.