1530065940: Zotero keeps refreshing in MS Word

rdmerckel

I have discovered that Zotero keeps on refreshing every 2 - 3 secs when a MS Word document has made use of a citation. This occurs visually as the mouse cursor changes to the refresh-type icon repeatedly. It also prevents me from selecting text: as soon as I've highlighted the text I wish to select, a refresh occurs and any highlighting I completed is undone - very irritating. The only solution I have found is to remove citations completely and not use Zotero. This of course is not a feasible solution, as the Journal I am writing to has their own reference style written for Zotero.

dstillman

The Zotero plugin only does anything when you click one of the buttons (e.g., Add/Edit Citation) in its toolbar. If something is happening another time, that's a Word problem (and certainly not a general incompatibility with Zotero, since many people use Zotero's Word plugin and we haven't received other reports of this).

dstillman

Does this happen if you close Zotero, restart Word, and open a document containing Zotero citations?

Or does it only happen immediately after you insert a citation into a document?

rdmerckel

The issue occurs when I have a Zotero-initiated citation, and the issue resolves when I remove the citation(s). There is no problem when I make use of Endnote for this purpose though, so I deduced that it must then be a compatibility issue between Word and the Zotero software. Also, I can have two documents open at a time, but only the one with the Zotero citation gives this issue.

rdmerckel

For now I am working around the issue by writing a mock article identical to the one I intend on submitting, so that I can register where citations must appear once I submit the official draft.

dstillman

You didn’t answer my questions, though. A Zotero citation is simply a Word field. Again, the plugin isn’t active when you’re not interacting with it, so if there’s a problem when you’re just working in your document without actively inserting/editing citations, there’s something wrong with your Word installation that we wouldn’t be able to help with. But we would need an answer to my above questions to clarify what you’re seeing.

dstillman

Also, what exact Word version is this?

rdmerckel

Your question was an either/or one though. I may have answered the "Or" part of the question unclearly. The issue occurs once I've inserted "a citation into a document". In other words, it occurs when I have made use of Zotero, but also if I've closed "Zotero and open a document containing Zotero".

The problem is present when:
1) The Zotero application has not yet been opened, but Word is active.
2) I've restarted Word.
3) I've opened a Word document containing a Zotero-initiated citation.
4) I close Zotero, restart Word, and open a document containing Zotero citations.

The problem is not present when:
1) I remove all Zotero citations.
2) I make use of an alternative referencing tool.

I am currently using a (fully licensed) version of MS Office Home and Student 2019.

dstillman

Right, so then this isn't a problem in Zotero. Once again, the Zotero plugin isn't doing anything when you're not interacting with it, and it inserts standard Word fields into the document, exactly the same as other similar tools.

If simply loading a document containing Word fields causes a problem, there's something wrong with either your Word installation or something else you have installed in Word — possibly even the EndNote plugin, which might do more when it's not being used.

You can open the Word startup folder, move any .dot(m) files there to a temporary folder on your desktop, and restart Word, and then see if the problem occurs. If the problem is a specific plugin, you can use trial and error, moving those back to the startup folder one by one and restarting Word each time, to see which one is causing the problem.

rdmerckel

Update: I repaired the Office Suite to check if this fixed the issue, which it did not. I then decided to uninstall Endnote and use Zotero alone, and the problem stopped. I then reinstalled Endnote and uninstalled Zotero (to use Endnote alone), and the problem also stopped. There must therefore be some incompatibility between these two applications?

dstillman

We've heard reports in the past of the EndNote plugin causing problems for Zotero users. We've never heard reports of the Zotero plugin causing problems for EndNote users, and that would be very unlikely, given how the Zotero plugin works.

You don't need to uninstall any programs to identify the problem here — you just need to do what I say above. If you've left the EndNote plugin in the Word startup folder and moved Zotero.dotm and any other files to a temporary folder and restarted Word and can still reproduce the problem, this is a problem with the EndNote plugin that you should report to them. And you shouldn't be satisfied if they say it's a Zotero problem, because you're not using Zotero at that point. The EndNote plugin obviously shouldn't break Word just because you open a Word document containing fields inserted by another program.