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I am writing my PhD dissertation in LaTeX and want to include a bibliography, obviously. However, I'm having problems making this work at all. Instead of trying to make it work in my multiple dissertation LaTeX files, I made a minimum working example of it, but not even that works! Can anybody please help me with telling me what I'm doing wrong? I want an author year citation style, by the way. No numbers, just citations of author year in the text and a reference list sorted alphabetically at the end.

This is my minimum working example, example.tex:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[backend=biber,style=alphabetic,citestyle=authoryear]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{library.bib}

\begin{document}
This is a test \cite{bakerstair}.

\printbibliography
\end{document}

Here's the content of my library.bib file:

@Article{bakerstair,
  author = {Baker, Doran J. and Stair, A. T.},
  title = {Rocket measurements of the altitude distributions of the hydroxyl airglow},
  journal = {Physica Scripta},
  year = {1988},
  volume = {37},
  pages = {611-622},
}

Error messages I get after running PdfLaTeX + Bib(la)tex + PdfLaTeX(x2) + View Pdf in TeXMaker:

example.tex. Warning. line 9. Citation 'bakerstair' on page 1 undefined.
example.tex. Warning. line 11. Empty bibliography.
example.tex. Warning. line 1. There were undefined references.
example.tex. Warning. line 1. Please (re)run Biber on the file: example and rerun LaTeX afterwards.

I have no idea what I'm doing wrong and it's driving me crazy.

moewe
  • 175,683
SiljeH
  • 11
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    Welcome to TeX.SX! Your editor probably doesn't run Biber for you, but BibTeX. Please check Biblatex with Biber: Configuring my editor to avoid undefined citations for detailed instructions on how to make your editor run Biber. – moewe Mar 17 '16 at 12:49
  • Thanks for the comment! You are rigth, TeXMaker didn't run Biber. I have now followed the instructions in the link, but I still get an error: "ERROR - Cannot find control file 'example.bcf'! - did you pass the "backend=biber" option to BibLaTeX? INFO -ERRORS:1.! How do I pass the backend=biber option to BibLaTeX? – SiljeH Mar 17 '16 at 14:48
  • In your MWE you already have backend=biber, so that should be OK. Do you maybe have the "use a 'build' subdirectory" option enabled? Can you find any temporary files in the directory (.aux, .bcf, .log, ...) – moewe Mar 17 '16 at 15:06
  • Yes, I had the "build subdirectory" option enabled. Now I've disabled it, but I got new error messages in addtion to the ones I've already seen before: ! Use of \sortlist doesn't match its definition. \sortlist{ ! Extra }, or forgotten \endgroup. \sortlist{anyt} ! Undefined control sequence.\entry ...ata@\the \c@refsection @\blx@slist@name@\abx@field@entrykey }\csu... \entry{bakerstair}{article}{} ! Undefined control sequence. ...equal \expandafter {\blx@slist@type}{entry} {\listcsxadd {blx... \endentry etc... – SiljeH Mar 17 '16 at 15:22
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    Delete the temporary files and make sure that the Biber and biblatex versions match. (Check the biblatex or Biber doc for a table of compatible versions.) – moewe Mar 17 '16 at 15:28
  • I'm sorry for my stupid questions, but how do I check which versions of Biber and biblatex I've got? – SiljeH Mar 17 '16 at 18:07
  • If you add \listfiles to the very top of your file you can check the biblatex version in the .log file after a compilation. The Biber version can be found in the .blg file. (You can also just do an update to make sure the versions match.) – moewe Mar 18 '16 at 06:58

0 Answers0