Zotero and Word Crashing

gregpriest

I continue to experience crashes when running Zotero and Word together. It is especially common when I refresh the references. I have to force quit both applications and restart, and even then it often crashes again.

macOS Monterey 12.7.1
Word for Mac 16.82
Zotero 6.0.31

dstillman

By "crash" is sounds like you mean "freeze"? (A crash would mean the programs are closing.) If this is a long document, you likely just need to wait longer. Word for Mac integration can unfortunately be rather slow at the moment, though we're working with Microsoft to speed it up.

Make sure you have "Automatically update citations" disabled in the plugin's Document Preferences window.

gregpriest

Thanks. Appreciate the quick reply, and the work on improving integration. I’ll double check the setting, and be more patient.

WBCotton

This is also happening for me. I am currently working on my thesis, so I am finding this completely unacceptable. I have "Automatically update citations" disabled. I would say it is "appears" random at first, but there are some common elements that I have noticed that conspire to make this occur.
1. If Word and Zotero have been idle for some time, like for a break etc.
2. Immediately on starting (within five minutes). If I wait 10+ I don't seem to have an issue.

My documents are currently in chapter form. I have not started combining and I am terrified to do so. I moved over to Zotero after losing all my references on Mendeley. I seem to recall all worked fine up until about 6-8 weeks ago. It seems that Microsoft has been going through a phase of constant updates.

I really hope you can get to the bottom of the issue.

Macbook Pro (Retina 15, mid-2015)
2.8GHz, Quad-core, Intel I7
16GB DDR3

Monterey 12.7.3
Word 16.82
Zotero 6.0.35

dstillman

@WBCotton: Same question, though. Are you referring to crashing or freezing? Freezing is unlikely to have changed — Word for Mac integration has been slow for years, and it won't be faster until we're able to switch to an updated framework that Microsoft is working on. You don't say what you're actually doing — inserting a citation? refreshing? — but your documents may just have gotten longer.

Can you provide a Debug ID from Zotero during an operation that's slow? If you're saying you can reproduce this at Zotero startup, you can use the "Restart with Logging Enabled…" option. It'd be normal for it to be a little slower in the first 30 seconds or so after Zotero startup. 1-5 minutes would not be normal. (And also, nothing about this would've changed in the last 6-8 weeks. Zotero 6 is no longer under active development, so there haven't been releases that would affect this.)

samuelviik

I also had problems with word and zotero. At first it worked smoothly but lately word kept crashing almost everytime I tried to add or edit citations. And I mean CRASH, not freeze. Today I noticed that it almost always crashed when I tried to add multiple sources, but sometimes didn't when adding a single source.

I tried this with a plank word and there everything worked perferctly. Then again the crashes happened on my master's thesis word document which is a little bit heavier in data than a plank version.

Now I checked updates for both softwares, zotero was upto date, but office had updates waiting. So I did the updates and tried after that. The same problems that were before didn't happen after the updates. So it seems that updates fixed it, but I'm gonna keep my eye on it and tell if it's gonna happen again.

I updated my word from File -> Account -> Update Options -> Update Now.
To check for zotero's update I used Help -> Check for Updates.