Error "Zotero experienced an error updating your document" on Google Docs

ffortier
Report ID: 1282452567

I share a sizeable document with a few colleagues on Google Docs, which now has several comments and tracked changed.

It worked fine for a couple of weeks. Then since this morning, I have been getting the above error message whenever trying to insert a new reference. I am also unable to edit any ref or the bibliography. I do not have that problem on new document. I also created a copy of that doc in Google Drive, and on that copy (which has not comment or tracked changes), I can create a new reference as normal.

I use Firerox 67.0.2 (32 bits) on Windows 10. Also tried Chrome 75.0.3770.100 (Official Build) (64-bit), but get the same error message.
  • bwiernik
    If you have a bibliography inserted at the end of the document, delete it and try again. If the problem persists, see http://zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_troubleshooting#debugging_broken_documents (especially the last step to find a corrupted citation)
  • ffortier
    Thanks bwiernik. I had already seen that suggestion, and tried deleting the bibliography, to no avail.

    I did however find the culprit: the fault was caused by a suggested text that included a footnote. Interestingly, neither that suggested text nor the footnote included a reference, but simply accepting the suggestion (converting it to regular text) fixed the issue, and all Zotero functions are back to normal. There are references, some in text and some in footnotes, elsewhere on the same page, but I made no changes to those.
  • nheeren
    > I did however find the culprit: the fault was caused by a suggested text that included a footnote. Interestingly, neither that suggested text nor the footnote included a reference, but simply accepting the suggestion (converting it to regular text) fixed the issue, and all Zotero functions are back to normal. There are references, some in text and some in footnotes, elsewhere on the same page, but I made no changes to those.

    @ffortier Thank you so much. You just saved me a lot of hours of debugging in our 100+ pages document!

    In my case it was exactly that. Once I accepted the suggestion on the footnote all was back to normal!
  • madurruty
    I have this same problem. My document is much shorter (about 20 pages) but it has many citations. I just added my gmail account to this, but cannot get the integration with zotero to work. Any ideas would be most welcomed. I did delete the bibliography, and accepted all the comments and changes in the document to no avail. And, I don't know if this is normal or not, but the references do not "highlight" in the document the way they do in word.
  • johanzi
    I noticed this error also happens in another case: when doing "refresh" while all citations are removed and a bibliography is present. In this case, the bibliography can be refreshed and the error appears. If only one citation is left in the text, the "refresh" function works find and modify the bibliography accordingly, keeping only one citation. This happens working with Google Docs in both Firefox and Google Chrome browsers. The manual solution is to delete the bibliography by end. I think this bug should have an easy fix.
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