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The following minimalistic document produces an "Undefined control sequence" error at \begin{document}. When I put \usepackage[english]{babel}in comments the error disappears. The compilation steps I am doing are pdflatex -> biber -> pdflatex.

\documentclass[a4paper, 12pt]{report}

\usepackage[backend=biber,style=alphabetic,citestyle=authoryear]{biblatex}
\usepackage[english]{babel}

\begin{document}
hello world
\end{document}

For obvious reasons I really want references in my document, but I would also like to use babel. I am using MiKTeX 2.9, pdfTeX version 3.1415926-2.5-1.40.14. Biblatex version is 3.3, and babel is 3.8m. Is there any solution to this conflict of packages?

BibLat

Sam
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  • You can get the versions by placing \listfiles at the very top of your document, after a LaTeX run (just force though the errors) you will get a list at the end of your .log file with the package versions. It is quite likely that biblatex and babel are not up to date (I suspect babel is too old for your biblatex, but I don't know exactly which command TeX complains about). You will need to do an update in User and Amdin mode, see How should one maintain and update a MiKTeX installation?. – moewe Apr 06 '16 at 14:07
  • Thank you! I am looking into updating the packages via MiKTeX at this very moment, although for some strange reason it is saying it cannot find the update manager... I am looking into this :) – Sam Apr 06 '16 at 14:18
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    A warm welcome to TeX.SE! I'm not getting that error when I use texlive 2015. The MWE compiles fine using latexmk, xelatex or lualatex. – A Feldman Apr 06 '16 at 14:20
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    My version of babel is 2016/02/09 3.9q, so I think we can safely say that the problem is with your outdated babel version. You will now only have to find a way to do that update. – moewe Apr 06 '16 at 14:22
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    You should also load babel before biblatex so that it can pick up the language information. – PLK Apr 06 '16 at 14:23
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it was solved by a package update (babel was outdated). – moewe Apr 06 '16 at 14:57

1 Answers1

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As moewe kindly pointed out, the installations of my packages (and just MiKTeX in general) was older than the observable universe. As such, I have just completely reinstalled MiKTeX -- which I am sure is overkill, but I digress -- and now my package versions are 3.9n for babel (2016/01/08) and v3.3 for biblatex (2016/03/03). That has (almost unsurprisingly) resolved the issues.

Community
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Sam
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    You should run MiKTeX Update after re-installation (latest babel is 3.9.q) , and redo the formats. – Bernard Apr 06 '16 at 14:58