I'm trying to write my first LaTeX document, but I'm getting a wired error message with regards to using Texmaker to use biblatex
. Whenever I try to compile my code the log highlights my \begin{document}
line and states the following:
! Package biblatex Error: file "'Document name".bbl' not created by biblatex.
Where "Document name"
is the name of my LaTeX file.
Here's my preamble:
\documentclass[11pt, twoside]{article}
\usepackage[margin = 2.5cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{amsfonts,mathtools,amssymb, amsthm}
\numberwithin{equation}{subsection}
\usepackage[none]{hyphenat}
\usepackage{gensymb}
\usepackage{changepage}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{xfrac}
\usepackage{tabu}
\usepackage{booktabs,caption}
\usepackage[flushleft]{threeparttable}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{float}
\usepackage{tabularx}
\usepackage[
backend=biber,
style = authoryear
]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{citations.bib}
Strangely, my test document for biblatex
does work, which has the source code:
\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[backend = biber,
style = authoryear
]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{RFCN-citations.bib}
\begin{document}
This is a text for bibLaTeX. \cite{HistOfMaths}
\printbibliography
\end{document}
I'm using Texmaker v5.0.2 and Windows 10 as my environment. I've made sure to configure Texmaker, as per the following screencaps:
I've been trying for 3 days now to get some sort of automated references within my document via some LaTeX package, and it's really starting to drive me insane.
Best Answer
When you first compile your
.tex
file, you produce some other files with information about the bibliography. You then run another tool to produce a.bbl
file. That file is then read back when you recompile your document to produce the bibliography and citations.But the format of the
.bbl
file depends on the tools you're using to generate the bibliography.If you use BibTeX, the
.bbl
has a pretty straightforward format, which looks pretty much as your bibliography would look if you entered it by hand using thethebibliography
environment.If you use Biblatex and Biber, the
.bbl
has a very different format, which looks nothing like code for your bibliography would look if you entered it manually. This is because Biblatex parses this file in a much more sophisticated way.The upshot of this is that whether you use Biblatex/Biber or BibTeX, the
.bbl
is read in when you recompile the document but, the format of that file has to match the tools you're using.So, if you initially run
bibtex <filename>
to produce a.bbl
and then try to recompile the document with a\usepackage{biblatex}
line, Biblatex will find that the.bbl
has the 'wrong' format. This can happen because you explicitly runbibtex
or it can happen because your editor is configured to runbibtex
automatically whenever you compile a document.Whatever the cause, Biblatex will find that the
.bbl
format is the old-style format which looks like code for your bibliography, rather than the new-style format which doesn't and which Biblatex expects.Hence, Biblatex will give you an error because it is faced with a
.bbl
which it knows is designed for a different bibliographic tool-set.The point is that Biblatex will not overwrite or remove a file which you might not want it to, because that might be pretty bad. Instead, it tells you about the problem so that you can decide what to do.
What you typically want to do is to simply delete the
.bbl
file, recompile the document and runbiber
to generate a.bbl
with the correct format. Then, when you recompile again, Biblatex will find a.bbl
in the format it expects.