Okay, I posted a couple days ago here under the Zotero Plugin thread.
And, I feel like this thread is dead maybe. But can anyone help me with this?
I was using Zotero Integration plugin for a very long time, and it simply doesn’t work anymore. Strangely, it only stopped working with Zotero references I added to my Zotero DB after say Jan 23 2026. It seems to work with any references entered before that rough date.
I’ve done everything that all threads here have suggested, and it still doesn’t work. I’ve tried other plugins like Citations, ZotLit, Simple Citations, and they don’t work either.
I’m very frustrated with this - I had something that worked great, and now - back to square one. I tire of all these updates (to either Zotero or Obsidian) making things I worked so hard to put together completely defunct, with such a long road back to functionality.
Have you tried checking your configuration settings for this? A few things that commonly cause this type of issue:
Check if there are any recent updates or changes to your setup that might have triggered this behavior.
Look at the logs for any error messages around the time this started happening. The specific error codes will point you to the root cause faster than guessing.
If you are self-hosting, make sure your environment variables and config files are properly set. Sometimes a missed setting after an upgrade causes exactly this kind of problem.
What version are you running, and did this start after a specific change?
Thanks for the quick reply. Like I said, I found about three other threads where people had similar problems, and followed the instructions that fixed it for them, with no luck. I have no idea what changes or settings could have affected this. I’ve auto-updated Obsidian several times, have been running Zotero 8 the entire time, and I just refreshed the Better BibTex Zotero plugin thinking that might help - it didn’t. I don’t even know where to look at the logs - would those be Zotero or Obsidian logs? Running Zotero v 8.0.2-beta.5+c35d7f21e, Obsidian Version 1.12.7, Zotero Integration 3.2.1, Better BibTex 9.0.10, all on Mac environment. It probably has something to do with the citation keys or an update to Zotero where they handle these differently. Because it works for all my old references, just not ones added to my Zotero DB after Jan 23. If you could point me to log locations or have any other ideas, I’d appreciate it.
It’s been awhile since I tried my Zotero integration but one thing I just, within the last 2 weeks, discovered is with a Zotero update some of my Zotero plugins stopped working correctly. While I can’t say for certain, maybe check if the Zotero version itself is not the issue, especially if you just updated Zotero around the same time as you noticed your problem.
By refreshing, do you mean uninstalling and reinstalling? I’ve had to do that in the past to fix the link between the two. In my experience, it is usually something on the Zotero end that I have to change.
A Detailed Update: The problem seems solved (for now)
I noticed that Zotero went from 8 beta to full 8 on Jan 22 2026 - very coincidental with the beginning of my problems and problem references.
Also, all my refs in Zotero now have two citation key fields containing the same standard bibtex reference: “Citation Key” and “Citation key.” I don’t think this is part of my current problem, but it could cause problems in the future.
I uninstalled and reinstalled just about everything you could think of - the Zotero Better BibTex plugin, the Zotero Integration plugin for Obsidian, Zotero itself (all with computer restart of course). This did nothing.
I went back to Zotero 7, the older version of Better BibTex 7.0.76, and I still had this problem of “citation not found”
I am using Zotero Integration plugin with both Pandoc, and another plugin called Pandoc Reference List (PRL). This may be part of the problem - PRL doesn’t seem to want to pull the bibliography from Zotero anymore in real time. I hacked this by manually exporting my full Zotero library to a separate .bib file, pointed this plugin to that file, and my problem was solved. This might be a workaround.
Strangely after all of this, I went back and tested for the issue, and it all seems resolved! Even after I redirect the Pandoc Reference List plugin back to Zotero, and “delete” (read- move) my hacked exported bib file.
I’ll continue testing and monitoring this, and may attempt to re-up to Zotero 8 and BBT 9.0.10, and report back.
