BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ natbib | Bibliography not compatible

[Tissie]

Dear all,

I hope someone can help me with the following problem.

I have a .bib file containing all my references.. I have my old pc, where I have WinEdt 5.5 and Miktex 2.7. And everything works fine.

Now I have a new pc, where i installed Miktex 2.7 and WinEdt 5.5. When I try to texify it stops and gives the following error:

!Package natbib Error: Bibliography not compatible with author-year citations.
Press <return> to continue in numerical citation style.
See the natbib package documentation for explanation.
Type <H> for immidiate help
...
l.17 ...mand\NAT@force@numbers{}\NAT@force@numbers

The weird part is that it works perfectly on the old laptop? And every report I have made from the past 5 years give the same error, but works fine on the old laptop.

Anyone able to help me?

Note that i use bibtex-style ieeetr (have always used that without problems), but if i change to plainnat, then there's no problem. But I want it to work as usual.

What has gone wrong?

Any help appreciated, thank you.

Regards,
Tissie

[localghost]

Seems to me like an issue of package versions. Insert the \listfiles command as very first line into your code and compile exactly the same document with the same compiler on both machines. Now take a look at the produced log files and pay special attention to the section between *File List* and *********** where all used files are listed. Compare especially the version of the natbib and related packages and update older versions with the MiKTeX Package Manager.


Best regards and welcome to the board
Thorsten¹

[Tissie]

Hey Thorsten,

Thank you for your reply.

I will look into your suggestion tomorrow as it is getting pretty late here in Denmark.

However, the weird thing is the stuff works on the 'old' miktex 2.7 installation on my old computer. On the new, all packages are up to date, so therefore I do not dare to update on my old pc, as this might make me unable to compile any documents ever written.


UPDATE:

I just followed you \listfiles advice, and here is the result..

OLD PC:

natbib.sty 2007/10/30 8.1 (PWD)

NEW PC:

natbib.sty 2009/02/02 8.3 (PWD, AO)

So, what can be done from here?

[Davydov]

Had the same problem, just overwrite the newer with the older one here: tex\latex\natbib\

[Tissie]

Hurray - that worked So there is a problem within newer versions of natbib.sty... I wonder if it will ever be fixed??

At least, I'll keep a backup of the old natbib.sty file for the future, when updating packages etc.

Thank you for the help, guys - I appreciate it.

Regards,
Tissie

[localghost]

I see no problem with the new natbib version. The following works for me.

Code: Select all

\listfiles
\begin{filecontents*}{xmpl.bib}
@BOOK{lamport94,
  author={Leslie Lamport},
  title={\LaTeX\ - A Document Preparation System},
  note={User's Guide and Reference Manual},
  year={1994},
  publisher={Addison-Wesley},
  edition={Second}
}
@BOOK{knuth84,
  author={Donald Ervin Knuth},
  title={The \TeX book},
  year={1984},
  publisher={Addison-Wesley}
}
\end{filecontents*}
\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage[margin=2cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage[authoryear,round]{natbib}

\begin{document}
  \citet{knuth84} \citep{lamport94}
  \bibliographystyle{plainnat}
  \bibliography{xmpl}
\end{document}

Detailed information about citation format should be given in the manual.

I think you should prepare a minimal working example (MWE) which exactly produces the misbehaviour you described in your initial post. We should get it to work with the current package version.

[Tissie]

I can see from your example that you use plainnat - this also worked for me as stated in the first post. Error occurs when using ieeetr.bst as bibliography style. A problem that apparently does not occur in older versions of natbib.sty.

[localghost]

I can see from your example that you use plainnat - this also worked for me as stated in the first post. […]

That's something I must have missed.

[…] Error occurs when using ieeetr.bst as bibliography style. A problem that apparently does not occur in older versions of natbib.sty.

You should make the authors of the involved packages aware of this issue.

[Tissie]

You should make the authors of the involved packages aware of this issue.

How to do that? where do i find authors? If you know who to forward this thread to, then feel free to do so

[localghost]

How to do that? where do i find authors? If you know who to forward this thread to, then feel free to do so

Usually authors give a contact address on the title page of the package manual(s) they have written. In the case of natbib there is no such contact given and I don't know if there is one for your bibliography style. You could post to comp.text.tex and contact authors in that way. If you get answers, you may report the result here.