Updating Citations Glitch?

Bryan.Millis
This may be related to several other posts which I have seen describing issues on longer documents, however, with a more heart dropping result. When I add a new citation in my paper (300pages with ~400 citations), or refresh the citations, there is a long period in which there is a dialogue box that intermittently blinks during the updating which reads "Word is converting tmpE7pbKb.rtf Press Cmd + to Cancel". This can last for minutes. Which isn't great, but understandable I guess given the number of citations. If there have not been many changes to the order of the citations, it is normally fine. However, if a new citation goes in to the paper relatively early (towards the begining) where many endnotes will have to be changed (style utilizes superscript ordered numbers), it will fatally glitch in which the entire work turns to boxes (instead of characters) which cannot be undone in any way, and the user looses any work after the latest save. Other times, it will just lock up the program. Is this just a limit in the resources of Zotero to handle larger documents? (Mac, with Firefox 5). Any thoughts? Starting to be concerned as deadline is looming...Thanks for any help!
  • adamsmith
    which Word is that? And which citation style specifically?
    Do you have a bibliography inserted?
  • Bryan.Millis
    This is Word 2011 (for Mac) and "Nature" style.
  • Bryan.Millis
    sorry, missed your last question. This effect seems to happen even if the bibliography is taken out. However, the freeze (not the weird symbols, but word lock up) seems to only happen when the bibliography is in.
  • Simon
    edited July 6, 2011
    When Zotero needs to update your subscripts, it inserts an RTF file. This is the cause of the "Converting..." window. The freeze when the bibliography is in is Zotero attempting to insert a large RTF file, and it is probably not actually a freeze; it probably just takes a while to insert your bibliography.

    If you have a document that's been converted to boxes, you can send it to us at support@zot..org, but my guess is that it's this bug in Word. Make sure Word is up to date.

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