Problem with Zotero and Word for Mac

nick riches
Hi

I'm a long term Zotero user and love it. But I just cannot get it to play with Word on a Mac. I'm having constant crashes when I press the Zotero Add Citation button. Both Word and Firefox freeze up. My productivity has plunged. I've never had a single problem like this when using Zotero on Windows.

I'm using Zotero with Firefox and an up-to-date version of Word (Word 16 I believe: Version 15.17.1)

Would switching to Zotero standalone solve this?

Many thanks
  • nick riches
    Okay. Making sure the references are not stored inside the document seems to prevent the crashing. However, cursor still blinks for about 15 seconds after a reference is added, during which time it's impossible to add another.
  • nick riches
    I've switched to Libreoffice. So far, this is working a lot better.
  • nick riches
    Okay, now the plugin for LibreOffice has crashed;

    Zotero experienced an error updating your document.

    An error occurred communicating with Zotero:
    com.sun.star.uno.RuntimeException:
    at com.sun.star.bridges.jni_uno.JNI_proxy.dispatch_call(Native Method)
    at com.sun.star.bridges.jni_uno.JNI_proxy.invoke(JNI_proxy.java:185)
    at com.sun.proxy.$Proxy40.gotoRange(Unknown Source)
    at org.zotero.integration.ooo.comp.ReferenceMark.select(ReferenceMark.java:140)
    at org.zotero.integration.ooo.comp.CommMessage.execute(CommMessage.java:121)
    at org.zotero.integration.ooo.comp.CommMessage.getBytes(CommMessage.java:40)
    at org.zotero.integration.ooo.comp.CommServer.run(CommServer.java:60)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)
    'An error occurred communicating with Zotero:
    com.sun.star.uno.RuntimeException:
    at com.sun.star.bridges.jni_uno.JNI_proxy.dispatch_call(Native Method)
    at com.sun.star.bridges.jni_uno.JNI_proxy.invoke(JNI_proxy.java:185)
    at com.sun.proxy.$Proxy40.gotoRange(Unknown Source)
    at org.zotero.integration.ooo.comp.ReferenceMark.select(ReferenceMark.java:140)
    at org.zotero.integration.ooo.comp.CommMessage.execute(CommMessage.java:121)
    at org.zotero.integration.ooo.comp.CommMessage.getBytes(CommMessage.java:40)
    at org.zotero.integration.ooo.comp.CommServer.run(CommServer.java:60)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)
    ' when calling method: [zoteroIntegrationField::select]
  • nodding greenhood
    edited January 21, 2016
    I'm not sure of this will help - when setting up open office / zotero on a MAC I discovered i needed a particular java version for legacy applications - you can find it here:
    Java for OSX 2015-001 download for legacy software
    https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1572?locale=en_US
    HOwever - I still had problems getting an author-date citation to work; changed to libre office - couldn't get integration to work with Zotero. Am really stuck as word 2016 seems to be a problem too; had old endnote files, transferred OK to Zotero; even going back to endnote is problematic - is not compatible with word 2016 yet, and looks like a long wait:
    http://community.thomsonreuters.com/t5/EndNote-General/EndNote-for-Word-2016-for-Mac/td-p/124763/page/3
    And I like the idea of open source software being able to do the job.
    The issue seems to be getting a word processor and reference manager to work on a MAC - 2016 versions. Will post again if/when I have some success. Good luck.
  • nick riches
    Many thanks for those useful comments. I'll check out that version of Java.

    I'm not quite sure what to do, because I love Zotero, but the word processor addins for MAC really don't work as they should. (NB may be a microsoft issue, and not a zotero issue).

    I'm tempted to try RTF scan
  • nodding greenhood
    Nick - I've managed to get LIbre Office to work; used the legacy Java. You need to turn it on.
    1. Install the legacy Java (see link above)
    2. Go to: LibreOffice/preferences/advanced
    3. Click on 'Use a Java runtime environment' (JRE is the acronym FYI in case you want to look it up) - you should have Oracle Corporation 1.8.0_66 showing up

    See if that helps

    Good luck :-)
  • nodding greenhood
    PS I am using Zotero standalone
  • nick riches
    Hi. The legacy Java doesn't help with the LibreOffice document, which still fails to communicate with Zotero.

    However, I've switched to zotero standalone which I'm using with Mac Word. This is working better. The updating of references across the document is faster, and the hangs are shorter. However, it still doesn't work as well as the Word for Windows plugin.

    NB I still haven't updated to El Capitan, but I doubt this'll make a difference?
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