Zotero application is not responding

nattnk

Hello,

I currently use a Mac and have been noticing that Zotero is operating extremely slowly on my desktop, especially as I import more and more citations into the program. I currently have over 20 000 citations in the group library that I share with my research team of seven, and am not sure if the number of citations may be causing the slowdown. Other members of my research team who are also using Zotero have noticed the same problem and when we switch over to EndNote, the import process runs a lot quicker. Furthermore, my Zotero has gotten to a point where it just does not respond. The moment that I open the application, the loading process begins and eventually the program just freezes, preventing me from clicking on anything so I eventually have to force quit out of it. It would be greatly appreciated if you had any suggestions on how to go about fixing this problem and what may be causing the issue to prevent it in the future.

Many thanks,
Nav

dstillman

The moment that I open the application, the loading process begins and eventually the program just freezes, preventing me from clicking on anything so I eventually have to force quit out of it.

I'm not clear on this. You're saying this happens every time? But then you say elsewhere that it's just running slowly. Could you elaborate? And how long have you let it go?

Also, you could provide a Debug ID for an operation that's slow?

nattnk

Hi sorry for the lack of clarification. Initially when I first started using it, I found that the program was progressively running slower and slower as I imported more and more citations. This was about 2 weeks ago. Now this is the same problem that my other team member using Zotero is experiencing. Now, however, the application just doesn't load for me and it has been the case for the past 2 weeks. The spinning wheel sign comes up and even when I let the program run for a few hours its still the same message. When I click on the application in my dock it says that the application is not responding. That message usually appears within a few minutes of opening the program.

Here is the debug ID: D1987776254

dstillman

No, it'd have to be a Debug ID from Standalone to be useful. If you can't provide one before restarting because it's freezing permanently, you can generate real-time debug output, which will also let you see whether it's actually doing anything while it seems to be frozen. Once it stops (or if it doesn't seem to be stopping), save the output from Terminal to a text file with Cmd-S, zip it (control-click on the file -> "Compress …"), and email it to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread.

dstillman

So it's certainly taking a long time to load — over two minutes to load the items list — and we'll investigate that, but it shouldn't be freezing permanently.

Was it actually frozen when you stopped it for this output? Before it freezes, are you able to make it to the Sync pane of the preferences and disable auto-syncing? If so, and you then restart again, does that make a difference?

Also, is this in the library root or another collection/search?

Is your trash empty?

If you're able to tell (perhaps after disabling syncing), how many total items are in your library, including child items?

nattnk

It was still loading when I was running the debug output and the loading sign continued to show up for a while afterwards. It's when I click on the Zotero icon on the dock that it says the application isn't responding. My trash currently has about 30 000 items in it. The last time I used Zotero, I was actually trying to empty my trash hoping that might make it run faster and that was when Zotero froze. It hasn't worked ever since. I'm trying to re-load Zotero right now in order to go to preferences but it is still loading and that has been the case for the past 15-20 minutes.

dstillman

My trash currently has about 30 000 items in it.

Oh, yeah, so that's likely part of the issue. I'm guessing you did a number of repeated imports and kept deleting large numbers of items, and with child items you may actually have a multiple of that figure in total in your database.

So you're kind of in a bad place at the moment, but if you can't disable syncing via the preferences, one option is to open the profile directory and delete prefs.js, and then restart. That will clear your syncing preferences (and your other prefs). Try that and see if that lets Zotero at least start up.

If it does, you're going to need to delete items in the trash in smaller batches. Depending on the specifics of your imports, you may also have lots of mostly unnecessary child notes on your items.

Alternatively, if you're happy with the state of all of your libraries on zotero.org (or want to try a single import again), you can simply close Zotero and delete zotero.sqlite from the Zotero data directory. It will then pull down all your data from the server.

dstillman

It's when I click on the Zotero icon on the dock that it says the application isn't responding.

And to be clear, that doesn't mean you have to force-quit it. That's just what the OS says when you try to interact with a program that's frozen, even temporarily.

nattnk

Hi Dan,
Zotero finally opened up for me this morning. I went into preferences and disabled auto-sync and unchecked the boxes which allowed for pdfs to be attached to each citation. I then decided to empty my trash (all 30 000+ items). It has been over 2 and a half hours and the loading sign is still coming up. Should it be taking this long to clear the trash in Zotero? It's making my entire laptop super slow to the point where I gave up trying to open other word docs or internet pages.

dstillman

As I noted above, you'll probably have to delete from the trash in batches. Emptying 30,000 items from the trash in one go almost certainly won't work (though this will be fixed in a future version).

nattnk

Hi Dan, how do I go about emptying the trash in bits as opposed to all at once?

adamsmith

go to the trash, select a chunk of items, press the delete key on your keyboard.