Inserting .bbl file in .tex file is not working

[bruce palmer]

Hi,

I'm trying to insert a .bbl file into a .tex file for a publication submission. The original article compiles fine using the .tex and .bib files and produces 38 references. When I replace the bibliography entries with the contents of the .bbl file I end up with 76 entries with the original entries being duplicated and the references in the article start at 39 instead of 1. Any idea what is going on here? I checked the .bbl file and it looks like each reference is only showing up once. I haven't had any problems in the past doing this.

Bruce Palmer

[Peter Flynn]

I'm not sure why you're doing this.

The .bbl file isn't designed to be inserted in the .tex document.

What are you trying to do that the normal method doesn't do.

Peter

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "LaTeX Users Group" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to latexusersgro...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/latexusersgroup/d0eff21c-c6c0-4037-a416-5ade8b8794e2n%40googlegroups.com.

[bruce palmer]

For some reason, most journals don't accept a separate .bib file as part of the submission package (I have no idea why. It seems like a pointless complication to me). The usual fix has been to compile the latex file and then edit the .tex file with the bibliography commands by commenting out the \bibliographystyle and \bibliography commands and copying the contents of the .bbl file in their place. This has worked in the past. I submitted an article in the spring and this approach seemed to be working then but not now.

I will check to see if it is still the case that you can't submit a separate .bib, which would solve the problem. However, if they still don't  take the .bib file then I need to get this to work.

Bruce

[Peter Flynn]

Ah, right. Weird. Let me do some digging.

P

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/latexusersgroup/508e6de1-217e-4aa5-a698-d87c3e296709n%40googlegroups.com.

[Peter Flynn]

On 27/10/2025 05:34, bruce palmer wrote:
> I will check to see if it is still the case that you can't submit a
> separate .bib, which would solve the problem. However, if they still
> don't  take the .bib file then I need to get this to work.

I just took the .tex source of my last article for TUGboat, commented
out the \printbibliography command and pasted in the contents of the
.bbl file. Not pretty: it gagged immediately on
! Undefined control sequence.
l.207 \datalist
and on all the fields within it.

I'm afraid I have no idea why it doesn't work; but I am using biblatex
with biber to create the .bbl file — maybe it's something that used to
work with the old bibtex (publishers are notoriously outdated).

Overleaf apparently recommends that you do NOT do this if using biblatex
and biber, however :-) Also see
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/632648/biblatex-copying-bbl-into-tex

Peter

[bruce palmer]

I tried using the .bbl file from overleaf and that did not go well either (it registered some kind of error). The .bbl file from pdflatex (Tex Live 2023) doesn't error but the results are all wrong in the final pdf.

I'll try submitting the .bib file and see what happens.

Bruce

[bruce palmer]

The secret is to remove the .aux, .bbl and .blg files after modifying the .tex file. It works after that. I don't recall having to do that in the past.

On Monday, October 27, 2025 at 10:23:34 AM UTC-7 Peter Flynn wrote: