Unresponsive Zotero menu in Word after plugin update to 5.0.7.SA.5.0.34

nanomoyano

Coinciding with the latest update of the Zotero Word plugin (currently to 5.0.7.SA.5.0.34), the Zotero menu became unresponsive. I get no error message but nothing happens upon clicking on any of the buttons. Same happens in new documents.
Is it possible to revert to the previous version? Can it be downloaded somewhere?
I'm using Word 2016 on a virtual Windows machine.
Any help is appreciated.

adomasven

Have you tried restarting your computer?

If you go into Options -> Customize Ribbon, enable Developer tab, then in the Developer tab click "Macros", do you see Zotero related Macros? What happens if you run them?

nanomoyano

Thanks for the fast response.
I again restarted the computer to make sure. Same problem. Going to the Developers tab, I see the Zotero Macros are all there. When I click to run them from there, same thing, no dialog open.
(Zotero is open by the way)

adomasven

If you try running the Macros with Zotero closed do you get a prompt that Zotero is not open? What's the full version of Word (like 16.0.7668.2074)?

nanomoyano

Yes, I get the prompt.
My Word version is Word 2016 MSO 16.0.4266.1001 32-bit
Thanks

adomasven

Could you produce a Debug ID from Zotero?

1. In the Help menu, go to Debug Output Logging and select Enable.
2. Click Add/Edit Citation in Zotero plugin in Word.
3. Before doing anything else, return to Help → Debug Output Logging and click Submit Output, which will disable logging and submit the output to zotero.org. A window should pop up containing a Debug ID. Click “Copy to Clipboard” and paste the Debug ID into this forum thread.

nanomoyano

D712836860

adomasven

Could you produce one directly after restarting Zotero?

nanomoyano

D1064278464

nanomoyano

In case it is related: I access my zotero library both from windows and linux. Pretty sure this caused a library corruption once, but the library seems to be fine at the moment.

adomasven

Your Debug ID contains

[JavaScript Error: "JSON.parse: unexpected character at line 1 column 1 of the JSON data" {file: "chrome://zotero/content/xpcom/schema.js" line: 752}]

Which indicates something being wrong with the library database. Although I'm not entirely sure why this would cause issues with the Word plugin. And yet, the issue is also pretty weird and unlike anything I have seen before (although we are getting a lot of weird Word issues recently with certain versions of Word, but yours should not be the culprit). How did you fix the database corruption last time?

nanomoyano

I uploaded the file to the zotero online tool and that fixed it.
https://www.zotero.org/utils/dbfix/

adomasven

It might be worth switching the Windows Zotero client to a different data directory (in Preferences -> Advanced) temporarily and seeing whether you can at least open Document Preferences then.

nanomoyano

I tested with a 5 day old zotero.sqlite backup and I sent the file to the fixing tool. Still the same problem.

nanomoyano

OK, that did it. It works fine with a fresh location. It seems to be something in my zotero library. Not good.

dstillman

@nanomoyano: Before you try anything else, try resetting translators and styles from the Advanced → Files and Folders pane of the Zotero preferences in your original data directory.

nanomoyano

I tried both suggestions. Still the same.

dstillman

Can you provide another Debug ID now?

dstillman

Oh, and make sure you've restarted Zotero after resetting translators and styles. (This isn't normally necessary, but in this case it could be.)

nanomoyano

I opened Zotero and LibreOffice in Linux and found that I have the exact same problem. So its not Word specific.

nanomoyano

Here's a report from the Linux side:
D1639045722

dstillman

[JavaScript Error: "JSON.parse: unexpected character at line 1 column 1 of the JSON data" {file: "chrome://zotero/content/xpcom/schema.js" line: 752}]

Right, so you have the same error there. Did you install a custom translator on these computers?

If you reset translators and restart Zotero, do you get the same error?

nanomoyano

Yes, no change.
Something else. In zotero, clicking File > Import or Export has no response.

dstillman

Right, everything related to translators will hang as long as you're getting this error. And, in fact, I suspect resetting translators itself isn't working because of this.

We'll fix this in a beta build in a couple hours, but if you want to fix it immediately, you can close Zotero, open zotero.sqlite in sqlite3, and run "DELETE FROM translatorCache;".

I'll post here when the beta is available.

nanomoyano

That's great news. I was starting to worry. Thanks for the excellent support guys.

For the record, that fixed it.

dstillman

This is fixed in the latest Zotero beta. After running that once, you should be able to switch back to the release version.