Problems with using BibTeX, the simplest code ever is not working

Question

I am completely new at using BibTeX for referring and citations, I used to include the reference list in the tex file everytime. Now I would like to modernise myself i little bit.

As I am totally new at this I read this page:

http://www.bibtex.org/Using/

I followed EXACTLY the steps in there: I created a .bib-file with the following:

@misc{ Nobody06,
   author = "Nobody Jr",
   title = "My Article",
   year = "2006" }

and then I created the following tex-file:

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{cite}

\begin{document}

\title{My Article}
\author{Nobody Jr.}
\date{Today}
\maketitle

Blablabla said Nobody ~\cite{Nobody06}.

\bibliography{mybib}{}
\bibliographystyle{plain}
\end{document}

I generate the pdf and nothing shows up: Just [?] and no reference at the end.

I am wondering, what can go wrong in such simple procedure? Thank you very much for any hints you may have!

Welcome to TeX.SX! Have you run bibtex as well? You need to compile with pdflatex, then bibtex, then pdflatex twice. Edit: See e.g. Question mark instead of citation number — Torbjørn T., Mar 12 '15 at 08:09
I'd be wary of http://www.bibtex.org/: the site is not in any any official and has some poor/bad info. Better by far is Tame the BeaST. — Joseph Wright, Mar 12 '15 at 08:19
Assuming your ran BibTeX you should have a log (.blg) file: does it report any errors? — Joseph Wright, Mar 12 '15 at 09:35
Aha! Torbjørn was right, I need to compile bibtex first :S now it works, I suppose this has to be done once just at the beginning? Thanks a lot! :D — mark, Mar 12 '15 at 09:47
Bibtex has to be run everytime you add or delete references. Many good tex editors detect whether bibtex runs are necessary. — J Fabian Meier, Mar 12 '15 at 09:49

qzx · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-12T08:28:54.573

1

If this is your output,

enter image description here

then, most likely, your file mybib.bib is not accessible by LaTeX. This means that it is not in the same folder as your LaTex file, or it does not have the .bib extension.

Otherwise, there's nothing wrong with your code. It would compile correctly like this:

enter image description here

edited Mar 12 '15 at 08:28

answered Mar 12 '15 at 08:21

qzx

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Aha!? Ok, but it is in the same folder and it has the bib extension :( – mark Mar 12 '15 at 09:28
Try executing "bibtex mybib" on the command line, and then recompile your latex file with "pdflatex mybib". Try each a few times if needed. – Benjamin McKay Mar 12 '15 at 10:14
@mark, better use a TeX editor, e.g., TeXworks, that automatically recompiles and does BibTeX runs when necessary. – qzx Mar 12 '15 at 11:30

Problems with using BibTeX, the simplest code ever is not working

1 Answers1