I'm wondering if some of the slowdown is Word itself -- Zotero really shouldn't affect Word at all when you're not performing some type of action in the Word add-on. A long document with hundreds of footnotes strains Word quite a bit, too.
Beyond that, there's small things you can do like not have a bibliography inserted until the end and choice of citation style, but as we say apart, large documents just aren't very fast and the best advice we can give is to author them in shorter chunks as much as possible.
Greetings,
I am experiencing a similar slowness with Word and Zotero. My document is only 117 pages with about 10 pages of references and it is taking a very long time to load zotero, find the citation, and insert it after I select that citation.
Thanks also from me to all Zotero developers! So far I've profited a lot from Zotero.
I'm also experiencing very slow citation refresh/add/editing peformance.
Also I'm using word for mac (now 2015, version 15.16) but actually I experienced a very similar spike in lag also using windows word on the same file (200 page thesis).
What's the advantage of programs like citavi? Do they have connections to the word:mac devision at microsoft or is it simply their larger development resources?
we don't know, it's closed source. I'd be surprised if Citavi had access to a proprietary/unknown API, though, so they're likely doing something else differently.
Kudos to the developers of this gem. Hands down, this is one of the most useful research tools I have come across in my academic life so far.
I have found a very simple and 100% effective workaround for the refresh lag in Zotero. It might apply to most of your writing projects, if not all.
I usually work on 300+ pages manuscripts with hundreds of bibliographic references and different citation styles. My first book had 326 pages with 180 bibliographic entries. I never, ever remembered having ANY kind of delay in refreshing the index, adding, removing, or updating any entry, anywhere, at any time during a few years of working with the manuscript.
Fast forward to my third book, it is 277 pages long with 60+ bibliographic entries. If I add a new reference somewhere in the text, the update/refresh lag used to be enormous, to the point that I was about to abandon further work on the book until I could find a solution for the lag. And then I recalled my first book. Why didn’t I have ANY similar lag working on a longer book with 3 times more references than this one?
The answer? It is the citation style that was different between the two books. In the first book, I used something like Vancouver (author-date), and in the 3rd book I am using The Open University (numeric, superscript). And this made the whole difference!
Now everything makes perfect sense and the solution is clear and definitive. Any numeric citation needs to be updated if a new reference is inserted somewhere in the text. The reason is to update all the reference numbers throughout the entire text. If a new item is suddenly added between item 14 and item 15, then the new item needs to be marked as item 15 and all the latter items need to be renumbered and incremented by +1. This will take a huge amount of time of course. It is not a bug, it is not a problem with Zotero, nor is it a problem with MS Word or LibreOffice. This is how things are supposed to work. A much faster computer would go through it much faster, but there is no immediate silver bullet to circumvent the necessary work.
Now, if you switch to a citation style such as Vancouver (author-date), or any other style that is NOT numbered throughout the text, then Zotero does not have to renumber all the citations if a new reference is inserted somewhere is the text. It simply adds the new item in the bibliography index and cites the reference in-line. Done! No lag of any kind.
Therefore, what I did was to switch to an author-date (or any style that is not numeric), refresh the index (took 5 minutes) and viola!
Now I have virtually zero lag when I insert new items in the text (or update the references in any other way). It happens instantaneously, all the time, anywhere in the text.
The solution to your problem, if you really need a numeric citation style, would be to switch to a non-numeric citation style, finish the paper (proofread, add/remove/update all the necessary references, etc.), and at the last step, switch back to your numeric citation style of your choice. Then wait for the whole conversion to complete, which might take anywhere from 5 minutes to 30 minutes or more, depending on the length of the text and the number of entries. Once you are done, make sure that the layout of the text is still the way you like it to be (since the length of the text will change when you switch from a numeric citation style to a non-numeric style and back). And then send the final copy to the print.
FWIW, even with author-date styles long documents can be slow, and Adomas is working on improving that. But yes, choosing a style that requires less updating is going to give you significantly faster citations.
I'm reopening this thread because I've run into the same problem, using the latest MS Word on a Mac. Working with a long doc and. Very. Very. Extremely. Excruciatingly. Slow!
After reading this through I cut and pasted the sections into separate docs, which felt like an annoying workaround but seems to be the only way forward. The reason I'm posting is that this doesn't help at all: it's the same length of delay, even now the document is circa 20 pages. Perhaps somehow the cut and past has preserved some kind of formatting that is linking back to the original?
If anybody has tips on this I would greatly appreciate them.
Fwiw I've also tried: turning citation to Harvard brackets to avoid renumbering (didn't seem to change anything, despite updating many times); setting footnote numbers to reset for every section, hence in theory limiting the number that need to be changed with every addition; cutting and pasting to new doc (as mentioned). I know it says above that this is likely a word problem, but it seems relevant that if I put in a regular footnote in Word itself then it's very quick, despite still renumbering the rest.
And I would be happy to try the 'delay custom update' option as mentioned above but can't find the beta version and wonder if it's no standard given the time between that post and this. Is there a way to set this function, normally or by getting a different version (without loosing all cites :)
Thank you for any help, this is really . . . annoying.
This future has long since exited Beta. Make sure you have the current version of Zotero installed by redownloading from https://Zotero.org/download
Then, in your document in Word, click the Zotero tab, then Document Preferences. There is a box for Automatically Update Citations. Uncheck that and click okay.
I ended up reinstalling Zotero, restarting computer, and doing this and it now seems to be working normally, for the shorter doc at least, haven't yet tried the long one but will try to avoid that!
I have the same problem here, with my own thesis. Everything is up to date on my MacBook Pro (2018). The major issue is not the huge amount of time needed to add a reference, it is the huge drain on my battery. I cannot seriously believe that my quad core CPU is not able to handle this tiny task without overheating. On the Windows version, it's incredibly faster. I read this whole thread and I'm really afraid that there has not been any upgrade since 2013. How can it be ?
Well, it took me two weeks to process that information, but now it seems very clear that it cannot be "Word for Mac"'s fault. I mean, Word works properly: what is not working is Zotero with Word for Mac and that cannot be neither Apple nor Microsoft's problem unless they refused to let Zotero change something. Is that the case ?
The problem is that the interface available for Zotero (and other external tools) to communicate with Word for Mac is massively slower than that for Word for Windows, so sending information back and forth between Zotero and Word -- and thus updating the document -- is much, much slower in long documents. Obviously this wouldn't show up when just using Word because there are no external tools involved, so you'd only see this when using Zotero, but, no, that doesn't mean it's because of Zotero.
I am a bit surprised this would actually run the processor hot, though. Is that showing as Word or Zotero using high CPU in your activity monitor?
I totally understand your point, but how comes that the issue has not been discussed with Microsoft/Apple's team since 2013?
Yes, actually. I was not that much bored at firt as I only thought it was longer.But then I checked my battery and it was only 60% in less than an hour of work. It occurs only when I have to update my citations.
Also, I want to tell you that I don't want to be rude and that I really appreciate your answers. I am deeply sorry to annoy you but the thing is that I lose so much time now using these tools, I can be a little desperate.
We have no channels to discuss this with anyone at Microsoft or Apple at a meaningful level -- we're too small.
Over the past two years Word for Mac integration has actually been reasonably fast and CPU unintensive, but there seems to have been a recent degradation in performance. Could you produce a Debug ID from Zotero for a Word operation that is slow? Could you also open the Activity Monitor and see which app is running at high CPU usage when performing a Zotero operation?
I understand. Your work here actually is amazingly tough.
There is the Debug ID: D96784018.
In the Activity Monitor, it clearly appears that Word's CPU usage skyrockets from 2-10 to 90-99% when I hit the "Refresh" button on a large (260 pages) document. And so is the energy drain in the dedicated Activity Monitor's subsection. I can ear my Mac's fan spinning at a higher speed.
It now takes around 10 minutes to actualise a bunch of citations.
I have been told by friends to use the "master document"/"subdocuments" trick so Zotero would not take that long in each separately, but I really need to edit this big document now. Unhappily, it cannot be fragmented.
Edit: Do you think it'd be significantly faster with an M1 ?
1. We have managed to get through to some Microsoft developers which might help us drastically improve the performance and battery use of the plugin in a few years time, although it will require a significant amount of work once the changes on Microsoft's side happen. 2. We have released Zotero updates that should have improved the performance of the plugin somewhat (not batter usage though). I see that you are already using the updated version.
Unfortunately there's not much we can do on our end at the moment. Switching to an in-text citation style (APA or other) if you are not already using one might increase the speed of updates, as well as breaking the document up into multiple separate docs. You can also try editing with a Windows computer or even try running Windows on your Mac as a last resort.
We haven't done extensive M1 Mac performance testing but have no reason to believe the integration would be much faster with one.
Unfortunately that is not the usual way to quote in my field of research.
I work on my Mac and play on a PC: I moved to macOS as Windows is really not trust worthy. I used to debug Windows for days instead of working, I can't afford that anymore. Surprisingly it even appeared that my work flow greatly benefited from macOS, except for Zotero.
I deactivated the "auto-update the citation" feature on Zotero's Word for Mac plugin, work on my Mac and then use my PC to actualise the document. That's a bit awkward but, eyh, best of both worlds.
Too bad for the M1, I will need another excuse to compulsively buy one some day.
"not the usual way to quote in my field of research"
You could work in the format that is convenient/bearable for you internally, and switch to the the standard in your field at any time. Then switch back to the lighter format if you need to make modifications, and so on and so forth. Just a suggestion.
Upgrade Storage
Beyond that, there's small things you can do like not have a bibliography inserted until the end and choice of citation style, but as we say apart, large documents just aren't very fast and the best advice we can give is to author them in shorter chunks as much as possible.
I am experiencing a similar slowness with Word and Zotero. My document is only 117 pages with about 10 pages of references and it is taking a very long time to load zotero, find the citation, and insert it after I select that citation.
Here is my debug ID: 1341058734
Warmly,
Beth
Thanks also from me to all Zotero developers! So far I've profited a lot from Zotero.
I'm also experiencing very slow citation refresh/add/editing peformance.
Also I'm using word for mac (now 2015, version 15.16) but actually I experienced a very similar spike in lag also using windows word on the same file (200 page thesis).
What's the advantage of programs like citavi? Do they have connections to the word:mac devision at microsoft or is it simply their larger development resources?
Maybe they're interested in supporting an initiative like Zotero and gain our esteem.
I have found a very simple and 100% effective workaround for the refresh lag in Zotero. It might apply to most of your writing projects, if not all.
I usually work on 300+ pages manuscripts with hundreds of bibliographic references and different citation styles. My first book had 326 pages with 180 bibliographic entries. I never, ever remembered having ANY kind of delay in refreshing the index, adding, removing, or updating any entry, anywhere, at any time during a few years of working with the manuscript.
Fast forward to my third book, it is 277 pages long with 60+ bibliographic entries. If I add a new reference somewhere in the text, the update/refresh lag used to be enormous, to the point that I was about to abandon further work on the book until I could find a solution for the lag. And then I recalled my first book. Why didn’t I have ANY similar lag working on a longer book with 3 times more references than this one?
The answer? It is the citation style that was different between the two books. In the first book, I used something like Vancouver (author-date), and in the 3rd book I am using The Open University (numeric, superscript). And this made the whole difference!
Now everything makes perfect sense and the solution is clear and definitive. Any numeric citation needs to be updated if a new reference is inserted somewhere in the text. The reason is to update all the reference numbers throughout the entire text. If a new item is suddenly added between item 14 and item 15, then the new item needs to be marked as item 15 and all the latter items need to be renumbered and incremented by +1. This will take a huge amount of time of course. It is not a bug, it is not a problem with Zotero, nor is it a problem with MS Word or LibreOffice. This is how things are supposed to work. A much faster computer would go through it much faster, but there is no immediate silver bullet to circumvent the necessary work.
Now, if you switch to a citation style such as Vancouver (author-date), or any other style that is NOT numbered throughout the text, then Zotero does not have to renumber all the citations if a new reference is inserted somewhere is the text. It simply adds the new item in the bibliography index and cites the reference in-line. Done! No lag of any kind.
Therefore, what I did was to switch to an author-date (or any style that is not numeric), refresh the index (took 5 minutes) and viola!
Now I have virtually zero lag when I insert new items in the text (or update the references in any other way). It happens instantaneously, all the time, anywhere in the text.
The solution to your problem, if you really need a numeric citation style, would be to switch to a non-numeric citation style, finish the paper (proofread, add/remove/update all the necessary references, etc.), and at the last step, switch back to your numeric citation style of your choice. Then wait for the whole conversion to complete, which might take anywhere from 5 minutes to 30 minutes or more, depending on the length of the text and the number of entries. Once you are done, make sure that the layout of the text is still the way you like it to be (since the length of the text will change when you switch from a numeric citation style to a non-numeric style and back). And then send the final copy to the print.
After reading this through I cut and pasted the sections into separate docs, which felt like an annoying workaround but seems to be the only way forward. The reason I'm posting is that this doesn't help at all: it's the same length of delay, even now the document is circa 20 pages. Perhaps somehow the cut and past has preserved some kind of formatting that is linking back to the original?
If anybody has tips on this I would greatly appreciate them.
Fwiw I've also tried: turning citation to Harvard brackets to avoid renumbering (didn't seem to change anything, despite updating many times); setting footnote numbers to reset for every section, hence in theory limiting the number that need to be changed with every addition; cutting and pasting to new doc (as mentioned). I know it says above that this is likely a word problem, but it seems relevant that if I put in a regular footnote in Word itself then it's very quick, despite still renumbering the rest.
And I would be happy to try the 'delay custom update' option as mentioned above but can't find the beta version and wonder if it's no standard given the time between that post and this. Is there a way to set this function, normally or by getting a different version (without loosing all cites :)
Thank you for any help, this is really . . . annoying.
Then, in your document in Word, click the Zotero tab, then Document Preferences. There is a box for Automatically Update Citations. Uncheck that and click okay.
I ended up reinstalling Zotero, restarting computer, and doing this and it now seems to be working normally, for the shorter doc at least, haven't yet tried the long one but will try to avoid that!
Thanks again, very helpful.
I have the same problem here, with my own thesis. Everything is up to date on my MacBook Pro (2018). The major issue is not the huge amount of time needed to add a reference, it is the huge drain on my battery. I cannot seriously believe that my quad core CPU is not able to handle this tiny task without overheating. On the Windows version, it's incredibly faster. I read this whole thread and I'm really afraid that there has not been any upgrade since 2013. How can it be ?
Obviously this wouldn't show up when just using Word because there are no external tools involved, so you'd only see this when using Zotero, but, no, that doesn't mean it's because of Zotero.
I am a bit surprised this would actually run the processor hot, though. Is that showing as Word or Zotero using high CPU in your activity monitor?
Yes, actually. I was not that much bored at firt as I only thought it was longer.But then I checked my battery and it was only 60% in less than an hour of work. It occurs only when I have to update my citations.
Also, I want to tell you that I don't want to be rude and that I really appreciate your answers. I am deeply sorry to annoy you but the thing is that I lose so much time now using these tools, I can be a little desperate.
Over the past two years Word for Mac integration has actually been reasonably fast and CPU unintensive, but there seems to have been a recent degradation in performance. Could you produce a Debug ID from Zotero for a Word operation that is slow? Could you also open the Activity Monitor and see which app is running at high CPU usage when performing a Zotero operation?
There is the Debug ID: D96784018.
In the Activity Monitor, it clearly appears that Word's CPU usage skyrockets from 2-10 to 90-99% when I hit the "Refresh" button on a large (260 pages) document. And so is the energy drain in the dedicated Activity Monitor's subsection. I can ear my Mac's fan spinning at a higher speed.
It now takes around 10 minutes to actualise a bunch of citations.
I have been told by friends to use the "master document"/"subdocuments" trick so Zotero would not take that long in each separately, but I really need to edit this big document now. Unhappily, it cannot be fragmented.
Edit: Do you think it'd be significantly faster with an M1 ?
1. We have managed to get through to some Microsoft developers which might help us drastically improve the performance and battery use of the plugin in a few years time, although it will require a significant amount of work once the changes on Microsoft's side happen.
2. We have released Zotero updates that should have improved the performance of the plugin somewhat (not batter usage though). I see that you are already using the updated version.
Unfortunately there's not much we can do on our end at the moment. Switching to an in-text citation style (APA or other) if you are not already using one might increase the speed of updates, as well as breaking the document up into multiple separate docs. You can also try editing with a Windows computer or even try running Windows on your Mac as a last resort.
We haven't done extensive M1 Mac performance testing but have no reason to believe the integration would be much faster with one.
1. Bravo. That's great news.
2. Yes, everything is up to date.
Unfortunately that is not the usual way to quote in my field of research.
I work on my Mac and play on a PC: I moved to macOS as Windows is really not trust worthy. I used to debug Windows for days instead of working, I can't afford that anymore. Surprisingly it even appeared that my work flow greatly benefited from macOS, except for Zotero.
I deactivated the "auto-update the citation" feature on Zotero's Word for Mac plugin, work on my Mac and then use my PC to actualise the document. That's a bit awkward but, eyh, best of both worlds.
Too bad for the M1, I will need another excuse to compulsively buy one some day.
You could work in the format that is convenient/bearable for you internally, and switch to the the standard in your field at any time. Then switch back to the lighter format if you need to make modifications, and so on and so forth. Just a suggestion.
(edited to change the tone, it felt a bit harsh)