Zotero problems when communicating with LibreOffice

arcady

OS X El Capitan 10.11.1
Zotero 5.0.76
LibreOffice 6.0.6.2

Hello everyone,

I have a bundle of problems that I noticed just today. When I use Add/Edit Citation button in LibreOffice, it does not work; more specifically, in a document I have been working on, it will connect to Zotero citations that have been inserted earlier, but if I want to insert a new citation, it will not connect to Zotero at all.

The mystery message "You have modified this citation since Zotero generated it. Do you want to keep your modifications and prevent future updates? Clicking "Yes" will prevent Zotero from updating this citation if you add additional citations, switch styles, or modify the item to which it refers. Clicking "No" will erase your changes." has occasionally popped up, but various diagnostics/fixes having to do either with typing within a citation field, or with the "Track changes" feature did not help - I tried all that according to the advice in the earlier discussions, and even attempted reinstalls of Zotero and JDK.

In addition, Zotero will not quit correctly after any attempt to call it from LibreOffice (i.e., when I tried to insert or edit citations). Zotero appears to collect references by DOI or PMID correctly, and quits fine as long as there no communication with LibreOffice during the session.

Thank you for any suggestion,

Arcady

dstillman

Start by upgrading both macOS and LibreOffice. Those aren't current versions of either. You should run at least the latest El Capitan (10.11.6), and if your hardware supports it (which is likely unless you're on a very old Mac) you should upgrade to a newer version altogether. For LibreOffice, you should run the latest version of 6.2 or 6.3.

arcady

dstillman, thank you! I upgraded to El Capitan 10.11.6 and LibreOffice 6.2.7.1, selected JDK 13.0.1 and reinstalled LibreOffice add-in on the Zotero side.

The problems with exiting and with inserting references into LibreOffice text documents seem to be fixed. There is some inconsistencies in a few old documents (the order of NIH-style references is not tracked properly), but this is not important.

Let us not close this thread just yet - the testing is ongoing!

angela_schwarz

Hi!
I had the same problem, I upgraded LibreOffice, but also in the mean time I deleted the Add/Edit buttons and now I can’t add them again into the toolbar! Everything in zotero and in the libreoffice extensions are enabled, I tried to download the plug in again and restarted everything and they still don’t appear in the toolbar! Please help !
Thanks

dstillman

@angela_schwarz: I'm not sure what you downloaded, but you should uninstall whatever it is (unless you just re-installed Zotero itself). The LibreOffice plugin is bundled with Zotero, and there's nothing separate to download.

If you're not seeing the toolbar buttons, see the troubleshooting page: https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_troubleshooting#zotero_toolbar_doesn_t_appear

angela_schwarz

Thanks! I found the solution in the link ( i look for it in LibreOffice view..toolbar..zotero)!
Now I have another problem, I downloaded JDK, I upgraded LibreOffice but I cant upgrade macOS, I have an old mac, the latest macOS that I can have is High Sierra 10.13.6.
When I tried to add citation it does connect with zotero but I recieve a problem message and LibreOffice crashes, the crash thread says 16 JAVA: thread 9.
Should I download a older java version?
Thanks!!

angela_schwarz

Its open office not libreoffice sorry abaout that
regards

dstillman

Wait, is it LibreOffice or OpenOffice? We don't support OpenOffice and haven't in many years. But there's no version 6 of OpenOffice.

What program are you running and what's the exact version?