Zotero is not syncing and getting really slow / freezing

Elisabeth Krull

Hi there, I am using Zotero on two computers and now one of them is telling me that an 'error occurred during syncing'. The little red circle with the exclamation mark in the right hand corner. I have raised it by following the instructions when I click on the red thing, and apparently something will be sent to the Zotero developers. However, I was still asked to post it in the Forum. The problem ID is 1187400466.

I have also noticed that Zotero is now really slow, i.e. when I am working on a reference (writing notes etc.) and then want to jump to another one to double check sth, Zotero is not able to handle that well anymore. It freezes and I had to close and re-open it a few times.

Also, when I want to include a reference in my Word doc, it is very slow. In addition, it now happens that when I select a reference that I want to include, it sometimes jumps to another reference of the same author. This gets quite annoying as it has never been a problem when Zotero was purely web-based.

Any chance anyone has a quick fix?

Many thanks in advance!

dstillman

Upgrade to the latest version of Zotero, which should display a clearer error — you're getting an access-denied error during file syncing that you'll have to resolve (likely by adjusting either file permissions or (more likely) security software settings).

We can debug any remaining issues after that.

This gets quite annoying as it has never been a problem when Zotero was purely web-based.

(Zotero was never purely web-based. Zotero for Firefox ran locally on your computer, the same as Zotero 5.0.)

Elisabeth Krull

Thanks for the response. I had the latest version installed and we have looked at security settings etc. - those were fine. I have also downloaded the Firefox browser.

Interestingly, it has synced a test reference I created at my home laptop after like 2 days (when I logged in the the same day, it hadn't shown). Still, the warning icon is still there and it continues to say "an error occurred during syncing".

I have submitted another error report with ID # 807265599

Many thanks,
Elisabeth

dstillman

Win error 5 during operation open on file C:\Users\:username:\Zotero\storage\72PVJ2KH\521.html (Access is denied.

You're still getting an access-denied error. You'll need to try adjusting either file permissions or temporarily disabling security software to figure out what's interfering with Zotero's ability to access files in the Zotero data directory. This isn't a problem in Zotero itself.

Elisabeth Krull

Thank you! I will work with our IT team and hope we can solve it this time.

Many thanks again,
Elisabeth