Unlinking Zotero Citations and Removing Field Codes

“Unlinking citations” and “removing field codes” describe the same action in Zotero: converting the live, auto-updating citations and bibliography in a manuscript into plain, static text. It is a real, necessary step before submitting a manuscript almost anywhere — and it is irreversible, which is why the mechanism matters more than the button. This guide focuses on Word and LibreOffice, where Zotero genuinely uses field codes; Google Docs uses a different mechanism entirely, covered separately below and in Using Zotero with Google Docs. Steps here are checked directly against Zotero’s own support documentation as of August 2026.

What a “field code” actually is

When Zotero inserts a citation into Word or LibreOffice, it does not type plain text. It inserts a field — a hidden, machine-readable code embedded in the document that tells Zotero (and only Zotero) which library item the citation points to and which citation style to render it in. That is what lets Zotero auto-update every citation and the whole bibliography in one click when you add a source, delete one, or switch citation styles in Document Preferences. It is also why a Zotero-formatted citation looks like ordinary text but behaves differently: select it and you’ll see it highlighted as a single unit, and deleting part of it can corrupt the field.

Field codes are a Word/LibreOffice-specific mechanism. A document still carrying them depends on having Zotero (or at minimum, a word processor that preserves that field type) to render correctly — which is exactly the problem when the document leaves your machine.

Unlinking citations in Word

The “Unlink Citations” button sits on the Zotero tab in Word’s ribbon. Running it converts every citation and the bibliography in the current document from live field codes into static plain text in one pass, document-wide — there is no per-citation unlink in the standard workflow.

Zotero’s own documentation is explicit that this action is irreversible and should usually only be done in a final copy of the document, with a specific recommended sequence:

1. Finish all edits, citation additions, and style changes first — once you unlink, Zotero can no longer auto-update anything in the document.
2. Save a backup copy of the live, still-linked document under a separate filename (or keep the version-history original) before touching Unlink Citations. This is the step people skip and regret — there is no “re-link” command.
3. Open the copy you intend to submit and click Unlink Citations on the Zotero tab.
4. Make any final manual adjustments to citation or bibliography text only in this unlinked copy — manual edits to a still-linked citation get silently overwritten the next time Zotero refreshes the document, so this order matters.

Keep the linked original. If a reviewer or co-author asks for a change after submission, you make it in the linked working copy and unlink again — not by hand-editing the already-submitted static text.

LibreOffice: the same mechanism, one extra option

LibreOffice’s Zotero plugin uses the same field-code approach as Word, and unlinking works the same way from LibreOffice’s own Zotero toolbar. One LibreOffice-specific wrinkle is worth knowing: Zotero’s Document Preferences dialog lets you choose whether citations in a Word/LibreOffice document are stored as Fields (the default, and what supports auto-updating and eventual unlinking) or as Bookmarks, an alternate storage mechanism. Bookmarks mainly matters if you move a document back and forth between Word and LibreOffice, since it sidesteps some field-conversion issues — but Zotero itself warns it does not work with footnote-style citations and can occasionally lead to citation corruption, so it’s a narrow trade-off, not a general substitute for Fields.

Google Docs is a different mechanism, not just a different button

This is where “field codes” gets misapplied. Google Docs does not have field codes at all — Zotero’s own documentation states plainly that its Google Docs integration “uses a different mechanism for storing citations than is used in the Word and LibreOffice plugins.” Citations there are stored as in-document links (of the form https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?...) plus separate document metadata, not an embedded field object. Google Docs’ Zotero menu does have its own Unlink Citations command, and it is equally irreversible and equally meant for a final copy only — but the underlying thing being converted, and several of the failure modes around it (citations going dead on a plain download, a collaborator without the Zotero Connector accidentally breaking a link), are specific to that link-based mechanism. The full detail on that, including the safe Docs-to-Word/LibreOffice round trip, is in Using Zotero with Google Docs rather than repeated here.

Why journals ask for this at all

Reference-manager field codes are built to be read by the reference manager that created them, not by an arbitrary downstream system. A production or typesetting workflow, a different word-processor version, or a submission portal that converts the file can garble or strip an active field in ways that are unpredictable and hard to diagnose after the fact — the citation might render fine on your machine and break on the next person’s. Removing field codes before submission converts the manuscript into ordinary text that behaves the same everywhere, which is why “please remove field codes / tracked reference-manager links before submission” is a common line in journal author instructions, even though the exact wording varies by publisher — check your target journal’s own author guidelines for its specific instruction rather than assuming this page’s general practice covers every venue. See Manuscript Format for Journal Submission for the wider submission-readiness checklist this step belongs to.

The same problem in other reference managers

Zotero is not unique here. EndNote’s Cite While You Write plugin uses the same field-code approach, and its equivalent step is called Convert to Plain Text (Tools menu, on the EndNote tab in Word) rather than “Unlink Citations” — same irreversibility warning, same save-a-copy-first discipline, different menu label. If you’re migrating a library into Zotero rather than finishing a manuscript, that’s a separate task covered in Zotero Setup and Troubleshooting if that’s what brought you here instead.

Frequently asked questions

Can I undo Unlink Citations after running it?

No. Zotero’s own documentation calls it irreversible. The only way back to a live, auto-updating document is to have kept a separate linked copy before you ran it — there is no “re-link” command that reconstructs field codes from plain text.

Do I need to unlink citations before every submission?

Only where the destination doesn’t need to keep the document live in Zotero — final manuscript submission, a version you’re sending outside your Zotero-using collaborators, or a document going to a system that might mangle embedded fields. If you and your co-authors are still actively revising, keep working in the linked version and unlink only the copy you actually send out.

Does Unlink Citations work one citation at a time?

In the standard Word and LibreOffice workflow, no — it converts every citation and the bibliography in the document in one pass. There isn’t a supported way to unlink a single citation while leaving the rest live.

Why do my citations look different (grey background, dashed underline) before I unlink them?

That’s Zotero’s visual indicator that a citation is still a live field, not plain text — Word/LibreOffice typically show a dashed underline, Google Docs a grey background. It disappears once the citation is unlinked, which is a quick visual check that the conversion actually took effect.

I already unlinked and now Zotero won’t update a new citation — what happened?

That’s expected, not a bug — unlinking removes the field codes Zotero needs to find and update that citation. Go back to your saved linked copy, make the change there, and unlink a fresh copy again rather than trying to re-establish the link in the already-unlinked document.

Steps on this page were checked directly against Zotero’s own support documentation (zotero.org/support) and, for the EndNote comparison, Clarivate’s EndNote documentation, in August 2026. Reference-manager interfaces change between versions; if a menu path here doesn’t match what you see, the linked vendor documentation is the current authority.