Unresponsive fields in Word

Markus Austria

Hello,

I have some troubles with the word file that is my PhD thesis. Somehow I am not able to add or edit references any longer. When trying to add a reference nothing happens. When trying to edit an existing reference, the standard interface opens and I can change information (e.g. the page range). But afterwards nothing happens and the field is not updated. Adding and editing references in new documents works fine.

I have already tried to go through the nine steps of the “Debugging broken documents” section at https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_troubleshooting but to no avail. Concerning point five, I am not even able to switch to a different bibliography style. When arriving at step seven, I have submitted error report ID 968135177 (note that FF crashed too at some point… I don’t think both instances share any causal relationship, however ;-).

The file is saved in a MS Word 2003 format. I am using Windows 7, Firefox 34.0, and Zotero 4.0.24.1. I am not sure where to look up the version number of the Word plugin, but I think all this information is included in the error report anyway, right? I use a script blocker in FF (NoScript 2.6.9.6) but disabling it did not resolve the problem.

If useful, I’ll be happy to send the original word file. But I don’t want to upload it somewhere and make it available publicly.

Thanks for any help anyone can give me with this!

Best wishes,
Markus

adamsmith

Did you go on to test steps 8/9?
Can you work normally in a new document?

Markus Austria

Thanks for your attention, Adam!

Yes, I did check steps 8/9 and could work normally in a new document. Anyway, I have experimented a bit more in the meantime and the nature of my problem has changed completely.

After disabling all plug-ins in FF but Zotero, I was again able to edit citations. The problem is, however, that I need to wait around 15 (!) minutes for changes to become effective. This makes working with Zotero quite cumbersome (if not entirely impractical). When closing FF during these 15 minutes, I seem to consistently get an error pop-up (Zotero experienced an error updating your document. Database permanently closed; not re-opening). But if I am patient enough the citation is updated, eventually.

So I guess my question boils down to this: Are there any known issues with Zotero when working with very large documents?

Best wishes,
Markus

P.S.: Btw, you may want to consider adding the advice to disable all other FF-plug-ins in the “Debugging broken documents” section. I reckon that might solve some problems, too ;-)

adamsmith

Yes, very large docs would cause massive slow down, though for 15 minutes that would have to be huge. Best advice I can give you is to author chapter-by-chapter.

Markus Austria

Thanks, Adam!

The document is now about 400 pages. Is that about "huge enough" for Zotero to take around 15 minutes to edit single citations?

Second, frankly I would not want to work on each chapter in a separate file. So is this issue something that will be fixed in a future update or something that we will have to "live with"? (or get more potent processors ;-)

Best,
Markus

adamsmith

Still seems slow, though it also depends on the number of references. But yes, a document of that size would slow Zotero down a lot, I wouldn't be surprised by lags of a couple of minutes.
There are some small steps you can try to improve this somewhat: delete the bibliography, maybe switch to an author-date style (which should be fastest).

There are some ideas on how to speed this up on the Zotero side, but it's not going to happen soon and I can't give you any prognosis on when. Could be half a year, but could also be multiple years.