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I am trying to do APA citation (Name, Year).

However, when I try to compile:

\bibliographystyle{apalike}

I get this error:

! Package biblatex Error: '\bibliographystyle' invalid.See the biblatex package documentation for explanation.Type H for immediate help.... \bibliographystyle{apalike}

Anyone know why?

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[a4paper, margin=1.25in]{geometry}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\usepackage{tgschola}% or any other font package you like
\usepackage{setspace}
\edef\restoreparindent{\parindent=\the\parindent\relax}
\usepackage{parskip}
\setlength{\parskip}{1em}
\restoreparindent
\pagestyle{fancy}
\usepackage{titlesec}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\graphicspath{{pictures/}}
\usepackage{subcaption}
\usepackage{caption}
\usepackage{float}
\usepackage{varwidth}
\usepackage[toc,page]{appendix}
\usepackage[backend=bibtex]{biblatex}

\bibliographystyle{apalike}
\bibliography{bib}

\renewcommand{\footrulewidth}{0.5pt}
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0.5pt}
\rhead{Team Frank}
\lhead{MINE 404}
\chead{Project Report}

\begin{document}

\printbibliography

\end{document}

Spend a whole night trying to figure this out with no success.

Alan Munn
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Terek Li
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    You can't use a \bibliographystyle command with biblatex. If you want to use an APA style with biblatex, use \usepackage[style=apa]{biblatex} and compile using biber not bibtex. See bibtex vs. biber and biblatex vs. natbib and What is the relationship between natbib, apacite package, and apa document class?. – Alan Munn Mar 17 '18 at 05:29
  • biblatex-apa's style=apa should only be necessary if you must really follow the APA manual. If you just want a style that is like APA ("apalike") or a general author-year style, then style=authoryear might be the better choice. – moewe Mar 17 '18 at 18:07
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    @moewe I agree, although the default author-year has some idiosyncrasies that will unfortunately always require some tweaking I think (e.g. the use of "In" with journals.) – Alan Munn Mar 17 '18 at 21:18
  • @AlanMunn Yes that is true. Fortunately many tweaks are quite easy. Often the default styles are easier to modify than contributed styles that are heavily customised to satisfy a particular style guide. Even supposedly trivial changes can be quite complicated with biblatex-apa or biblatex-chicago, so I would only use those styles if I have follow the respective style guide or if I can guarantee that the changes I have to apply are indeed minimal. In my experience many people that use apalike are not actually after full APA compliance, but rather generic author-year citations. – moewe Mar 18 '18 at 09:22

1 Answers1

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You are mixing commands from two different bibliography methods. The \bibliographystyle command cannot be used with biblatex, and is used with a different bibliography package such as natbib or apacite, or with no package at all.

biblatex uses a different method of styling the bibliography, and the style is specified in the options to the \usepackage{biblatex} command.

There are various ways to get an APA conforming bibliography style, both with biblatex and without it. The following question shows you two ways:

Summarizing, you can either:

  1. Remove the \bibliographystyle{apalike} from your document and instead use:

    \usepackage[style=apa]{biblatex}

If you use this method, you should use biber to process the bibliography.

or

  1. Remove the \usepackage{biblatex} from your document, and instead use:

        \usepackage{apacite}
    \bibliographystyle{apacite}

or 

        \usepackage[natbibapa]{apacite}
        \bibliographystyle{apacite}

If you use this method, you should use bibtex to process the bibliography.

For more general information see also:

Alan Munn
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