LaTeX LaTeX: Troubleshooting Bibliography Citations and References

AI Thread Summary
The user is experiencing issues with LaTeX bibliography citations, as their document compiles without displaying citation numbers or generating a bibliography section. They provided a sample code and a BibTeX file but were unsure if additional steps were needed. It was noted that running LaTeX, BibTeX, and LaTeX multiple times is necessary to generate the references list. Ultimately, the user resolved the issue but found BibTeX too complicated for their needs, opting to do references manually instead. The discussion highlights common troubleshooting steps and frustrations with LaTeX bibliography management.
Saladsamurai
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I am looking through all sorts of tutorials and I could swear I am doing this right. But obviously not. The source code compiles and generated the PDF just fine, but no citation number shows up (just ?? in stead) and no bibliography section is generated.

Here is a sample code. I know the preamble is obnoxious, but I inherited it from someone else.

Code:
%*****************************************PREAMBLE*********************************
%*******************************CLASSES/PACKAGES*******************************
\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{geometry}                % See geometry.pdf to learn the layout options. There are lots.
\geometry{letterpaper}                   % ... or a4paper or a5paper or ... 
%\geometry{landscape}                % Activate for for rotated page geometry
%\usepackage[parfill]{parskip}    % Activate to begin paragraphs with an empty line rather than an indent
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{epstopdf}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{setspace}		 %allows line space too be changed w/in document
\usepackage{times}			 %change default font to times new roman
\usepackage{indentfirst} 		 %indent 1st line of paragraph after new section
\usepackage{textcomp}
\usepackage{tocbibind}

%No idea what this does
\DeclareGraphicsRule{.tif}{png}{.png}{`convert #1 `dirname #1`/`basename #1 .tif`.png}

%*****************************************TWEAK OVERALL PAGE LAYOUT*******************************

%change default line spacing: double space = 1.6 And 1.5 space = 1.3  <--go figure
\linespread{1.6}


%number equations according to section number
\numberwithin{equation}{section}		
\setlength\textheight{7.7in}				
\setlength\textwidth{6.5in}			
% Left margin on odd numbered pages + 1 inch
\setlength\oddsidemargin{0in}			
% Left margin on even numbered pages + 1 inch
\setlength\evensidemargin{0in}			
% Amount of indentation at the first line of a paragraph
\setlength\parindent{0.25in}				
% Distance between paragraphs (Any time LaTeX sees a blank line, it treats the next line as the start of a new paragraph)
%\setlength\parskip{0.25in}				

%*****************************************MAIN DOCUMENTt*******************************
\begin{document}

I am trying to cite this article number \cite{Zurek}

\clearpage 
\bibliographystyle{plain}
\bibliography{ref1}



\end{document}

This is the contents of the bibtex file named ref1.bib I created it and saved it as a .bib file. Did I need to do anything else with it? Like 'run' it or something?

Code:
@ARTICLE{Zurek,
   AUTHOR  = {Zurek, R. W. and Martin, L. J.},
   TITLE   = {Interannual Variability of planet-encircling dust activity on {M}ars},  
   YEAR    = {1993},
   JOURNAL = jgr,
   VOLUME  = {98},
   NUMBER  = {E2},
   PAGES   = {3247--3259}
}
 
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I have no idea why this is not working. I have tried several examples from online including BibDesk and nothing. I might have to do this by hand :/
 
Stating the obvious but: Do you know that you need to run latex, bibtex, latex and then latex again on your source document to generate the references list?
 
Hootenanny said:
Stating the obvious but: Do you know that you need to run latex, bibtex, latex and then latex again on your source document to generate the references list?

Hi Hootenanny :smile: No I did not. But I wound up figuring this out. Unfortunately, BibTex is so temperamental about other stuff, that I had to do my references by hand anyway. I am sure it's great if you have the time to master it, but for writing the one thesis I'll ever write ... I should have just used MS Word

Thanks for replying though!
 

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