How to check citations and references match in a manually prepared document with APA author (year) citations?

I like to use bibliographic software (e.g., Endnote, BibTex, etc.) to manage my references. However, sometimes I am working on an existing article that has been written with APA citations and references written manually. For example, I might be working with a collaborator who has written the first draft or I'm adapting a student thesis for journal publication. As a result, citations get added and deleted, and there are reference errors: (1) citations present with no reference; reference needs to be added (2) references present with not citation; reference needs to be deleted.

So, a common task when such documents are being finalised is to go through the document and pull out all the citations and check them against the reference list and fix any errors. This is generally a frustrating task, because (1) unless you are careful errors can be made, and (2) if the document is edited further, the document may need to be rechecked.

Question

• What is an efficient strategy for identifying citations without references and references without citations in a document with author (year) style citations (e.g., APA, Harvard)?


• Are there any automated tools that perform this checking?