Reference issue: In-text references appearing as bold question marks in LaTeX (but not Overleaf)?

Question

hope you are well!

I usually use "Overleaf" but recently I decided to switch to the offline version - LaTex. And, I am encountering this issue with references appearing as bold question marks "????". Do you know how to solve this? I've been reading and trying different things from the LaTeX forum but haven't been able to solve it. Thank you

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{mathptmx}
\usepackage{times} % these two packages "times" and "mathptmx" are for "times new roman" font, if you dont want these font, then delete these 2 packages
\usepackage{apacite} %for citations in APA style
\usepackage{etoolbox} %for bibliography
\usepackage{graphicx,url}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{placeins}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{setspace}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage{natbib}
\typeout{}
\bibliographystyle{apalike}
 \bibliography{bibfile}
\title{Bibliography management: \texttt{natbib} package}
\usepackage{listings}
\usepackage{color}
\usepackage[affil-it]{authblk}
\usepackage{soul}
\usepackage{booktabs} %For Tables
\usepackage{float} %For Tables
\usepackage{graphicx} %For Tables
\usepackage{caption} %For Tables
\usepackage{lscape} %for Tables
\usepackage{blindtext}
\pagestyle{plain}
\begin{document}
\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{References}
\begin{flushleft}
    \raggedbottom
     \bibliographystyle{apalike}
  \bibliography{bibfile}
\end{flushleft}
\end{document}*

Exactly which editor are you using with the offline version you have installed. — daleif, Jun 29 '21 at 08:41
you need to run pdflatex then bibtex then pdflatex again (overleaf does this for you) — David Carlisle, Jun 29 '21 at 09:17
You should also not use \usepackage{apacite} and \usepackage{natbib} in the same document. Rather, load apacite with the option usepackage[natbibapa]{apacite}, which will automatically load natbib with the correct compatibility options. — Manuel Weinkauf, Jun 29 '21 at 10:50
There should be a button or an item for it on a menu. Not on a Mac, so cannot help further. — daleif, Jun 29 '21 at 11:23
@RachelBrann Yeah, well, the TeXShop documentation is not the best. However, on their webpage it seems there is a dropdown menu (the one that says "LaTeX" in the background window of the image they show). Can you switch this to "BibTeX" maybe? You then must run "LaTeX" -> "BibTeX" -> "LaTeX" -> "LaTeX" and all should be fine. For further details, compare this thread. — Manuel Weinkauf, Jun 29 '21 at 12:39
There are helper programs that you can use to ensure the compilation calls all the requisite programs the right number of times to get the output to build. You can configure TeXShop to use them. This solution using pdflatexmk or this version using arara are probably easier than trying to do the "right number of compilations" by hand every time. — Willie Wong, Jun 29 '21 at 18:10

Reference issue: In-text references appearing as bold question marks in LaTeX (but not Overleaf)?

0 Answers0