Pandoc Reference List: "Cannot find citation" after Zotero update — fix

[grugq]

The problem

The Pandoc Reference List plugin caches CSL style files (e.g. chicago-note-bibliography.csl) from GitHub in your vault's .pandoc/ folder. The citation-style-language project renamed many of their style files — for example:

• chicago-note-bibliography.csl → chicago-notes-bibliography.csl (note the added s)

The old URL now returns 404: Not Found. The plugin downloaded that error, cached it as if it were a valid style file, and then citeproc (the citation engine) crashes trying to parse "404: Not Found" as XML. The result: every citation shows "cannot find citation" even though Zotero is running and the library loads fine.

This affects anyone using a CSL style URL pointing to the old filenames on GitHub.

How to fix it

Step 1: Find your vault's .pandoc folder

Open your vault folder in Finder (or file explorer). Look for a hidden folder called .pandoc. On macOS, press Cmd+Shift+. to show hidden files.

Inside you'll see .csl files — these are cached style sheets.

Step 2: Delete the bad cached file

Delete any .csl file that is suspiciously small (a few bytes instead of hundreds of KB). You can open it in a text editor — if it says 404: Not Found instead of XML, delete it.

Or just delete all .csl files in .pandoc/ — they'll be re-downloaded.

Step 3: Update your CSL style URL

In Obsidian, go to Settings → Pandoc Reference List → Citation style URL.

The old URLs no longer work. Find the correct new URL:

1. Go to the CSL styles repository
2. Search for your style (e.g. type "chicago notes" in the search box)
3. Click the .csl file, then click "Raw"
4. Copy the URL from your browser

Common corrections:

Old filename	New filename
chicago-note-bibliography.csl	chicago-notes-bibliography.csl
chicago-author-date.csl	chicago-author-date.csl (unchanged)
apa.csl	apa.csl (unchanged)

For example, the correct URL for Chicago Notes & Bibliography is:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/citation-style-language/styles/master/chicago-notes-bibliography.csl

Step 4: Restart Obsidian

Close and reopen Obsidian (or run Reload app without saving from the command palette). Citations should now render correctly.

How to tell if this is your issue

• Citations show "cannot find citation" for all keys, even ones you know exist in Zotero
• The @ autocomplete still finds your references (the library loads fine)
• Open .pandoc/<your-style>.csl in a text editor — if it says 404: Not Found, this is your problem