How to use \nocite{*} command in article class without getting question marks in the body of the text?

Question

I'm having some troubles using the command \nocite{*} to avoid citations in the body of my text. I've compiled many times and it keeps showing me question marks at the \nocite{*}'s location. No matter what bibliography style I use, it still shows the question marks. Besides, I've tried to use the listbibpackage and didn't have a good result as well.

Please, don't mark this question as already asked because the only one related to this talks about Other issue

This is (hopefully), the MWE:

\documentclass[12pt ,a4paper]{article}

\usepackage[brazil]{babel}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{ae}
\usepackage{harvard}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{caption}
\usepackage{parskip}
\usepackage{indentfirst}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{amssymb,fancyhdr,fancybox,epsfig,psfrag,amsmath,tabularx}
\usepackage[paperwidth=8.5in,paperheight=11in,hmargin={25mm,20mm},vmargin={20mm,20mm}]{geometry} %tamanho letter
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{key,
author = {Author, A.},
year = {2001},
title = {Title},
publisher = {Publisher},
}
\end{filecontents}

\begin{document}
Hello world
\nocite{key} 
\thispagestyle{empty}
\newpage
\bibliographystyle{abbrv}
\bibliography{\jobname} % or \addbibressource{/jobname.bib}
\end{document}

Instead of posting a screenshot of your code, please add a minimal working example (MWE) that illustrates your problem. It will be much easier for us to reproduce your situation and find out what the issue is when we see compilable code, starting with \documentclass{...} and ending with \end{document}. — jub0bs, May 11 '14 at 00:49
Did you run bibtex and recompile the document twice to eliminate the question marks? — cfr, May 11 '14 at 00:52
Yes, I've tried to recompile many times as I could, but it didn't eliminate the question marks @crf — Pedro Nakasu, May 11 '14 at 01:04
Please post a compilable example as part of your question - as @Jubobs suggests. The png you link to isn't a complete document. — Ethan Bolker, May 11 '14 at 01:04
@PedroNakasu We don't like links too much, here. Instead, you should make your question self-contained by posting a MWE. Besides, you don't have to sign with your name since it automatically appears in the lower right corner of your post. — jub0bs, May 11 '14 at 01:13
@jubobs I've read your How to make a MWE link but I still don't know how to create a compilable MWE since my issue is related to the bibtex, not to thebibliography environment. Sorry for the signature. — Pedro Nakasu, May 11 '14 at 01:23
Part of your work is to isolate the problem first, then post a minimal example that reproduces the problem, and then hope for an answer. Regarding how to make a MWE that involves BibTeX, see http://meta.tex.stackexchange.com/questions/4407/how-to-write-a-mweb-minimal-working-example-with-bibliography — jub0bs, May 11 '14 at 01:24
@jubobs Thanks for the patience, I've just edited my question up there, I hope I could show my MWE! — Pedro Nakasu, May 11 '14 at 01:58
Possible workaround: Replace \usepackage{harvard} with \usepackage{natbib} and \usepackage{har2nat}. — Paul Gessler, May 11 '14 at 03:30

score 8 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 14 '21 at 07:00

The MWE can be reduced to the following code:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{harvard}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\bibliographystyle{abbrv}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{key,
author = {Author, A.},
year = {2001},
title = {Title},
publisher = {Publisher},
}
\end{filecontents}
\begin{document}
Hello world \nocite{key} 
\bibliography{\jobname}
\end{document}

which still exhibits the issue. I did not look into the harvard package code for the details, but it seems it does not handle the \nocite macro consistently with the LaTeX built-in support or other packages.

As a workaround, the document can be migrated to natbib while still using all the citation commands provided by harvard by replacing

\usepackage{harvard}

with

\usepackage{natbib}
\usepackage{har2nat}

as described in the har2nat package documentation.

Here's the complete revised MWE:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{natbib}
\usepackage{har2nat}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\bibliographystyle{abbrv}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{key,
author = {Author, A.},
year = {2001},
title = {Title},
publisher = {Publisher},
}
\end{filecontents}
\begin{document}
Hello world \nocite{key} 
\bibliography{\jobname}
\end{document}

And the resulting output (no question mark! :-) :

How to use \nocite{*} command in article class without getting question marks in the body of the text?

1 Answers1