Zotero stopped working on word documents stored on OneDrive folder with Office 365 Build 11001.20074

Nicolas Jondet

Hi,

For the first, this morning, I haven't been able to use Zotero on Word documents that are located on my OneDrive folder on my windows PC.

When I try to add a citation on a word document, Zotero says:

"Zotero experienced an error updating your document.

This command is not available because no document is open. [getDocument:document.cpp]"

My Office 365 apps were automatically updated with the latest version - Version 1810 (Build 11001.20074) , which was released on Friday October 29.

My assumption is that it is this office update which removed this essential ability to use Zotero in documents stored on my OneDrive folder.

Is that the case? And if so, is there anything I can do, apart from waiting for another Office update (or a Zotero one) or moving those documents outside of my OneDrive folder somewhere else on my hardrive?

Many thanks for your help.

Nicolas

adomasven

Have you tried restarting your computer? We have had reports of OneDrive documents not working ever since Microsoft started offering it, but we could not reproduce the problems ourselves.

Nicolas Jondet

Just tried restarting the computer, after making sure that windows, office and zotero were all up to date but it did not work.

When I launched word for a file on OneDrive it said:
"Word is running into problems with 'c:\users\appdata\roaming\microsoft\roaming\startup\zotero.dot' add-in. If this keeps happening, disable this add-in and check for available updates. Do you want to disable it now?"

However, everything works fine for word documents located outside the OneDrive folder.

adomasven

You should reinstall the Word plugin in Zotero Preferences -> Cite -> Word Processors. This will give you a new plugin UI designed for newer versions of Word. That's unlikely to help with OneDrive, but that error message is pointing to an outdated version of the Zotero plugin installed into Word.

We'll look into this more over the coming days, but your best bet for now is to move the documents you need to work with Zotero out of OneDrive until further updates for Zotero and Office

Nicolas Jondet

Thank you very much!

Reinstalling the Word plugin did solve the problem and I can now use Zotero with document in my OneDrive folder.

I guess, my issue was that I was not even aware that the word plugin had been uninstalled by the latest Office update.

I have a Zotero related tell to alert me to the fact that an Office update has occurred.

In Word, I always make sure to add the Zotero 'Add/Edit Citation' command on the Quick access toolbar, it saves me from having to go on the Zotero tab whenever I want to add a citation.

Every time there is an Office update, this Zotero command disappears from the Quick access toolbar. But everything else is working fine, especially in the Zotero tab. I only need to reinstall the quick command to have maximum functionality.

This Office update looked the same: the quick command had disappeared bu the Zotero tab was still there.

But it is now clear that the update also remove the whole plugin.

In the future, I will make sure that the plugin remains installed after an Office update.

Thanks again for your help.

adomasven

Office updates do not remove the Zotero plugin, only Word UI customizations. However, you did have a fairly old version of the plugin in Word, which should have been updated automatically by Zotero, but wasn't. This would happen if you had reset or move your Zotero (or Firefox, from the days when Zotero was still part of it) profile at some point. From now on the plugin should update automatically.

Nicolas Jondet

Yes, looking back on it, the frequent automatic word plugin updates did stop after I switched from Firefox to standalone back in the summer of 2017.

Glad to know that I now have the latest version of the plugin on and that it will automatically update.

Many thanks