Thanks for the fast response. My document is 332 double-spaced pages or almost 90,000 words (it's in the process of being shortened) and 832 KB. I don't know how to tell how many citations I have.
Assuming you have a reasonable number of citations for a document of this size (i.e. over 200), the Word plugin will inevitably be slow. This is an issue with Mac Word. Your best bet is to disable automatic citation updates in the document preferences and if that doesn't help, insert citations in a different document and paste them into this one, then refresh in the end.
Thanks. I probably do have over 200 citations. I had already disabled automatic citation updates and I don't think it made much or any difference. I will try inserting citations in a separate document and pasting them in. I didn't think of that. Thanks.
PS So I gather that because this is an issue with Mac Word, you don't have any sense of whether or how soon it might ever be addressed?
Same as here: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/75544/word-2016-mac-plugin-very-slow Yes, the solution is to work in another document (even open at the same time!) and copy/paste between them. It's slightly awkward at first but then a very fast workflow, and solves all of the speed issues, except when you must finally update the main document at the end, but you can do that overnight.
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PS So I gather that because this is an issue with Mac Word, you don't have any sense of whether or how soon it might ever be addressed?
Yes, the solution is to work in another document (even open at the same time!) and copy/paste between them. It's slightly awkward at first but then a very fast workflow, and solves all of the speed issues, except when you must finally update the main document at the end, but you can do that overnight.