Word plugin freeze/unresponsive

JustBlade

Hi team,
A few days ago, I started getting problems with the word plugin getting very slow and then completely unresponsive. Ribbon was working fine, but when clicking on 'add/edit citation' nothing happened. This was on Zotero 6. Have updated to Zotero 7 and still experiencing the same thing. I've worked through the uninstall and reinstall instructions with no joy.

All that happens is the Word window greys out waiting for the dialogue box to appear and there's nothing.

After attempting some of the troubleshooting solutions I've also started getting macro disabled messages which I never had before. I've worked through and added the Word/STARTUP folder to Trusted Locations.

This is an institutional device (Windows laptop) and I will also speak with the IT team. Any leads or pointers will be welcome.
Much appreciation in advance! I really don't want to go through uninstall/reinstall the whole program if I can avoid it.

JustBlade

Oh, I've also tried both 32bit and 64bit versions and same problem :(

dstillman

After attempting some of the troubleshooting solutions I've also started getting macro disabled messages which I never had before.

Are you still getting those? You'd get that from this troubleshooting step, about the Zotero tab not appearing in the ribbon:

If the Zotero tab is still not present, go back into the Trust Center Settings, open the “Macro Settings” pane, and select “Disable all macros with notification”. Restart Word and see if you get a notification asking for macro permissions. Click “Enable Content”.

Assuming you've resolved that and you're seeing the Zotero tab, does it work in a new, empty document?

JustBlade

Yeah, worked through those steps already. When I enable content specifically in the document, the same thing happens :( I've left it several minutes and remains unresponsive. I have tried this with existing and new documents.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u193959/46enp96ssn7fq15whvaz.png

JustBlade

Update: I've logged a ticket with the institution IT services and they are investigating. Apparently I'm not the first either! Report at the moment is that they're unsure what's causing the problem :(

LeonBarmuta

We are having the same problem. We now need to get institutional approval to delete Zotero.dotm, so going through the full troubleshooting instructions for Word on Windows 11 is going to take a while. Have any of the other people posting on this thread able to get Zotero plugin for Word to work once they've worked through the troubleshooting steps? (forgot to mention that this is on 64-bit, and the Zotero plugin does not even respond to clicking on "Document preferences" on a completely new Word document)

sfischer74

I am having the same problem, too. This has been happening for over a week now. I have worked through all of the troubleshooting steps multiple times and nothing has changed. Have you found a solution?

JustBlade

Update: our IT team have been able to work out a fix and have reported to me that the problem was created by a mix of security settings and the way that Zotero works. They've said that Zotero needs to run with the same profile as the one running Word but the institutional security settings were set to run the program with more access, so updates caused a syncing issue with it running within Word.

What IT were able to do was to set the access back to account level same as Word. They've said that if there's an update it will need to be installed by using the new installer from the website (security settings mean that I won't have enough access to install it from within Zotero).

Have checked and the plugin is working again, huzzah!

Hope that helps others! It might also be useful for devs as we continually adapt to evolving IT security contexts.