Word plugin doesn't work (error ID 19055932619)

I'm encountering a problem today. The word plugin really doesn't work. It doesn't seem to recognize the citations. When placing the cursor within an existing citation, and pressing "add/edit citation", it doesn't recognize that citation. This happens both with old citations and new citations that I add. But sometimes if I have inserted a new citation, and place the cursor in a new place, sometimes the most recent citation will "stick" - meaning that adding a new citation will just edit the most recent one.

I'm using Word 2016 on Windows 7. Have tried to reinstall the word plugin, but nothing changed.
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  • Generally this happens if you've saved the document in a format other than .docx (e.g., .odt), which will break existing citations.
  • Thanks! But I don't think I did this... The only possible thing is that I switch between using word/zotero on a mac at home, and word/zotero on a PC at work. I usually send the document by email to myself to make sure I don't lose it. It works flawlessly on my mac, and until today it has also worked on the pc. Don't know why it's malfunctioning now.
  • Is it possible that you opened it in Google Drive and downloaded it from there? If you no longer have active fields, it's quite likely that the document was saved in some other format, and you'll need to restore from a backup with active fields.

    You can check whether you still have any active fields by toggling field codes.
  • But it also happens whenever I insert a new reference? If that was the problem, it should apply to old references, I guess... but new ones as well? No, I don't think I downloaded it from google drive.
  • From your description, it sounded like newly inserted citations might work, which would be the case if you were saving as .odt or similar and frequently closing and reopening the file. In any case, check for field codes to see what's there.

    Unless you have this problem in a new document, it's some problem with your existing document. Generally you'd then follow the Debugging Broken Documents steps, but it really depends on the state of the citations in this document. If they're gone, they're gone, and you'd need to revert to a backup.
  • edited May 23, 2019
    Came home now, and have confirmed that I have the same problem on my mac. So it is indeed something with my document. Which means that I will need to find the last functioning version of my document...
  • Seems like me most recent document is corrupted as well. This sucks so so so much. I need to do a whole lot of work to get the refernces back in. How do people deal with this? Is this common with Zotero?
  • This can really only happen if you 1) save the document in the wrong file format, 2) move the document between different word processors (e.g., Word and Google Docs) in the wrong format, or 3) explicitly use the plugin's Unlink Citations button to flatten the citations. It's not something that just happens in normal usage.

    Do you have an earlier backup of the file? Have you checked to see if there's version history of the file within Word?
  • I really don't know what happened. The only thing I've down is to email the document to myself and open in on two different computers... I don't use google drive. But who knows, perhaps my gmail nevertheless did something fishy to it.

    I found a previous version which worked, but it was so far back that I can't use it... I've done too many changes in the document since then (it's my PhD thesis). Needed to copy the text to a new document and start anew. I guess I will start saving it on dropbox instead of mailing it, and that I should also create new versions of the file frequently, in order to have functioning older versions in case something similar happens again.
  • You may be able to use the Word feature which allows merging different revisions of the same document. See https://support.office.com/en-us/article/compare-and-merge-two-versions-of-a-document-f5059749-a797-4db7-a8fb-b3b27eb8b87e
  • Thanks! I'll try that out
  • Problem just came back in the new document also, after initially working. This time I only saved it to dropbox, nothing else.
  • Did you close and open the document before the problem occurred? What file format is the document saved as?
  • I don't THINK I opened and closed it... but can't remember correctly. Perhaps. It's saved as docx.
  • Is this a completely new and fresh document? In the Zotero plugin, under Document Preferences, are citations saved as Fields or Bookmarks?
  • Completely new document. Saved as fields. It does seem though that some citations were kept as fields from the old document, even though I did unlink all the citations before copying. Perhaps I need to copy it as only text with no formatting at all, in order to get a clean start?
  • Ok, could you step by step explain what you did up to this point, i.e. where the current citations are coming from, how you created the new document, what is working, not working, or working partially?
  • Step by step: Experienced problems in my old document. Marked all of the text, unlinked citations. Copied and pasted all of the text to a new document. Things worked initially. I saved that document to dropbox. Might have closed and opened it, not sure. Then the problem has resurfaced. Which means that I can insert new citations. But after having made further new citations, when I place the cursor into the new citation to edit it, it doesn't recognize it. Sometimes it also happens that an old citation comes up when I place the cursor at a new place to add a new citation.

    It does look though like some of the old field codes didn't become unlinked, and might still be messing up things. I will try to copy only text without any formatting at all to a new document, and see if that works.
  • Seems to work now, after having copied the text without any formatting, as clean text. But now I get the job of re-formatting all the document...
  • Did you recently update Word? You should go into Zotero -> Preferences -> Cite -> Word Processors and reinstall the Word plugin on both of the machines that you work on. There were bugs for a very specific part of users of Zotero that did not get automatic Word plugin reinstall due to having changed their Zotero profiles once upgraded past Word 16.9, which this sounds like it could be. All of the citations that include non-accented latin symbols without the updated plugin would be broken in the way that you describe: uneditable, although usually appearing in the bibliography, hard to remove, etc. You might need to remove those citations, including one character around them and reinsert them to ensure you do not run into any issues after reinstalling the plugin within Zotero Preferences.
  • Problem came back, in my all fresh document, which was stripped completely of all formatting. No, I did not update word recently, and I have reinstalled the word plugin several times. This is getting intolerable for me. I will probably need to go back to Endnote.
  • When we ask about a completely new document, we mean a document you're creating from scratch — we don't mean a document that you're copying your old document into.

    If you can reproduce this in a completely new document, we'd want to know the exact steps for that to happen. If it requires copying part of your old document to trigger it, you should follow the Debugging Broken Documents steps and figure out what part of the document needs to be present for this to occur.

    But before you do any of that, what exact version of Word is this?
  • Right now I'm on word 16.23 on a mac. Ok, I will see if it's triggered in a document with no copied text. But I have 150 pages of thesis I need to copy over, so I need to copy it eventually... but perhaps it might become clear what parts of it are broken
  • You should also try manually removing Zotero.dotm from your Word startup folder, restarting Word to make sure it's gone, and then reinstalling the plugin from Zotero. That will confirm that you're using the latest version of the plugin in Word.
  • Yes, problem triggered in a completely new document as well.
  • What I did was start typing new text. Putting in references from my library. When placing the cursor at new place, it still gets the last reference come up when I want to create a new reference.
  • Can you provide Steps to Reproduce and a Debug ID (different from a Report ID) for this? This is very strange, so for the steps, we need literally everything you're clicking or typing and everything you're seeing on screen.
  • Ok, let me see if I can work it out.
  • Ok, I submitted a debug ID. What I did was place the cursor at the end of the text. Typed command + 7 to generate a new reference. What came up initially was a previous reference. Just to be sure I deleted that and typed in the new reference I wanted. Pressed enter. What happened in the document was that the first reference got changed, and no new reference was inserted where I had the cursor.
  • I can also provide screenshots if that makes it easier, but I can't see a way to upload them here.
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