error: citation/ bibliography is wrongly placed in index area, please delete the placed citation/ bibliography in index area

Anonymous
2018-12-10T16:43:04+00:00

Hello community,

I am having problems with word and/ or mendeley. It keeps showing me the following error: "citation/ bibliography is wrongly placed in index area, please delete the placed citation/ bibliography in index area" when trying to edit or insert a citation.

any suggestions on how to solve the problem?

Kind Regards,

Eva

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments No comments
Answer accepted by question author
Anonymous
2018-12-18T19:17:06+00:00

I had the same problem, just after the update - immediately after the update.

I wasn't having any citation highlighted, but rather a Prism graph. I took someone's advice and turned on field code by pressing alt+F9. I found this bit of code: "{ ADDIN }" appended to the end of the field code for my embedded graph. Once I deleted that item the document became functional again. I just replicated the same fix in a backup version of the file I had made, it really is just that piece of code.

It looks like there are other pieces of code containing "ADDIN", based on a ctl+f search, one for each of my citations. But this { ADDIN } was the only one that was sitting alone, with nothing else in its curly braces. 

So here are the steps: 

  1. Hit ALT+F9
  2. Search for ADDIN (I didn't get a result for { ADDIN, only the letters themselves worked)
  3. Delete the search result that is { ADDIN } alone
  4. Try to refresh your bibliography to see if it's fixed!

Was this answer helpful?

500+ people found this answer helpful.
0 comments No comments
Answer accepted by question author
Anonymous
2018-12-14T11:05:17+00:00

I managed to correct the error. Hope it will help others.

Every time I received the window with an error, Word was pointing on a particular piece of text with some citation that has a mistake (too bad it's not highlighted). You need to identify which citation is corrupted and delete it (just copy different parts of your text into a new word document + compile bibliography again, so that way you can eliminate the corrupted citation).

Was this answer helpful?

100+ people found this answer helpful.
0 comments No comments

48 additional answers

Sort by: Newest
  1. Anonymous
    2018-12-19T12:50:53+00:00

    THANK YOU SO MUCH !!!!!!! IT HELPED

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  2. Anonymous
    2018-12-19T04:17:36+00:00

    I have searched all over for a solution and sent in the issue to Mendeley about the error "citation/ bibliography is wrongly placed in index area, please delete the placed citation/ bibliography in index area." This all occurred after an update and affects all previous versions of this document where it was fine.

    I have tried looking for a standalone {ADDIN} or ADDIN or XE and found none in my document. I still tried to delete all the ADDIN words in my document anyways and i get the error "Use the "Insert Citation" button to add citations to this document."

    To make a long story short, I stumbled across some peculiar words that had "Endnote...." By deleting entire entries****of 5 of them and { ADDIN EN.CITE { ADDIN EN.CITE.DATA }} the plugin has miraculously decided to work again and generates the Bibliography! From here i will check what I removed but it looks like i solved it.

    Hope this helps everyone!

    Was this answer helpful?

    6 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments No comments
  3. Anonymous
    2018-12-18T15:17:34+00:00

    I had the same problem but in my thesis where cutting and pasting hundreds of entries (and re-inserting references wasn't an option).

    I simply uninstalled Mendeley (with Revo uninstall) and re-installed an older version and its working fine again.

    Bug with the new update I guess?

    Aidan

    Was this answer helpful?

    2 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments No comments