unwarranted cross-reference changes

roypeled

I'm back to heavy use of Zotero after a few months of not working on my dissertation, hence a new wave of questions, hope this will end soon.

I'm adding a new source, and then referencing to it in a totally new footnote. for some reason Zotero rushes to change old footnotes, messes up with their formatting and then gives me a message saying "you have modified this citation since Zotero generated it..." etc. Whether I click "Yes" or "No" it will move to another fn (allways the same two) and give the same message, and after that I get an error message saying "Zotero experienced an error updating your document. [ZoteroWindowIntegration Exception... "" code: "0" function: "zoteroWinWordField::SetText" location: ".\zoteroWinWordField.cpp"]
And then I end up with the fn I originally wanted to add NOT added and these two other fns messed up.

???

Thanks,

Roy

PS - to undo these changes I have to undo a series of several dozens of actions appearing in my "undo" list, all starting with VBA-Range or VBA font.

PS2 - just tried again, this time it added the fn I was trying to add, not before it freezed and run no less than 834(!) VBA-Range or VBA-font actions I have to undo.

thanks again,

Roy

roypeled

???

adamsmith

(youtube link above is spam, will disappear once a moderator comes by)

How are you adding a cross-reference? With Word's built in function? I can well see that causing chaos when you do that inside a Zotero citation, as it's using the same fields.

roypeled

I wasn't trying to add a cross-reference, just a regular footnote, I mentioned cross-referencing because I thought that's what Zotero is trying to do running spontaneously between all these different footnotes.

adamsmith

OK. First thing I'd try is to simply replace the two footnotes in question (i.e. delete and redo them). Can't tell you what happened there, but it sounds like they might have become corrupted. If that doesn't work, we can look further.

roypeled

will do and report.

roypeled

No avail :( :(
I deleted these two, and now I can't add them back cause whenever I try to, it messes up with many other footnotes (4 or 5 of them). I have to undo more than 830 actions to reverse the 'damage' to the footnotes.

adamsmith

we need you to be precise in reporting problems. "Messes up" can mean any number of things - what exactly happens?

fbennett

Do you have similar problems in a newly created document?

roypeled

where can I upload a JPG or doc file to show?

adamsmith

anywhere you want - e.g. imgur.com - just link here.

roypeled

basically direction changes, fonts change (only for part of the text) font size changes (again only for part of the text) and there's even some new info added which I have no idea where it comes from. All this in a footnote I had no intention to touch and far away from where I'm trying to add one. As I said, might be helpful if I could upload a doc or pdf/jpg for you to see.
Thanks a lot,
Roy

roypeled

ok, sec

roypeled

here goes -

http://imgur.com/2r5vfG4

adamsmith

that looks like it's fbennett's territory. He changed some RTL code recently, might have affected this.

roypeled

I just noticed fbennett asked whether this happens with a new document. I tried out and it seems not to, but hard to say because I only added 5 footnotes to this new document, so far adding one didn't interfere with the existing.

Thanks,

Roy

fbennett

If a fresh test document works correctly, it sounds like this is caused by document corruption. Try going through the steps for debugging broken documents, and let us know what you find.

roypeled

nothing's working :(
I issued an error report numbered - 734270334

Only thing I didn't thoroughly try from the debugging page was isolating the citation, cause it's a 100 page doc with 250 citations, and it seems that there are multiple problems (since I tried to delete those citations that were being changed, but that didn't help, it just began messing up with other footnotes).

fbennett

At least take one step toward isolating the citation. Copy-paste the first 50 pages to one fresh document, and copy-paste the second 50 pages to another. Then check whether one document succeeds while the other fails.

roypeled

ok, so I went ahead and tried. Didn't help much :(
I copied 20 pages to a new file. Still had the problem. Split that to two 10-page files, on of the didn't have it, one did. But then I split those ten pages again, and both new docs had it. I thought it might be two different problematic footnotes, but next time I split the file, none of the documents had it $@#$!@L:

fbennett

So the condition that triggers the error exists in both of the smallest-size problemmatic files. Look for common features, such as references that appear in both. In one of the files, try removing citations one by one, to see if there is a point at which the problem clears. If it does, try reinserting the removed reference. If the problem reappears, you have found a bug. If it doesn't, you have identified the corrupted reference in your document.

roypeled

but the weird part is that I had a situation where the problem persists in one file, and when I split it to two - it disappeared from both smaller files. How does that make sense (if at all)?

fbennett

Well, for example the error might be caused by the combined effect of two references, in which case it would go away when they end up in separate files. We won't know until you do some further testing. Until we have steps to reproduce the error on other systems, or pin the fault down to a specific point of corruption in your document, we can't say much about the cause.

roypeled

back to testing, will let y'all know (this is driving me nuts).

Thanks,

Roy

roypeled

k, long long story, I added 2-3 pages at a time. Found 7 different footnotes that caused problems. removed, added them again and it seems to be ok now. Is it of any use to anyone if I send those citations for qa purposes?

fbennett

For what it's worth, we're also curious about the cause. When you have more info, we'll do our best to help work out what's happened under the hood.

fbennett

Ah, we crossed in the post. Very glad to hear that you've been able to get things going again. If you have a document that contains one of the bad references, and the content is not confidential, I can take a look if you send it to me by mail. Can't guarantee anything, but some hint of what went wrong might turn up.

roypeled

It is confidential, which is why I wrote it in Hebrew, so you can't understand a thing. More seriously, the file linked here has just the paragraphs with the problematic footnotes. It is from my dissertation, so not for circulation, but nothing highly sensitive.

The document starts with a short eplanation. Let me know that it opens ok -

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzqqBrVF2AZwR0dNMVVBZ3BDR00/edit?usp=sharing