Urgent help needed! Zotero is not working

meiragold

Zotero report errors: 1026488007 and 1766650010.

I'm working on a large draft (PhD thesis) in Word that I recently copied and pasted into one document from several different ones. I tried not to use any previous documents with track changes, as I know this tends to complicate Zotero, but at any rate, I've "accepted and stopped tracking" as suggested. I've been having a lof of issues. Sometimes Zotero allows me to add/edit citation, but when it does it's REALLY slow. Currently it's not letting me add any new citations. My bibliography also just disappeared from the page. When I click 'add/edit bibliography' nothing happens. I'm already working in a duplicate copy of the thesis because I was having issues with the first. It's also not saving properly. I have to to close the document to prompt the message to save it, and then it closes and I get the error message "Zotero experienced an error updating your document. Would you like troubleshooting instructions." Sometimes I also get this message unprompted. I've followed most of these instructions, nothing is helping. I don't know what to do, but I really need this solved because I have to submit in a week. Please help! This is pretty urgent!

Update: I tried copying the whole document into a new one and adding in the bibliography again. After 10 minutes, I got the following error message: "Updating citations in this document is taking a long time. Would you like to disable automatic citation updates? You will need to click Refresh in the Zotero tab when you are done inserting citations.You can change this setting later in the document preferences." I don't know what to do.

dstillman

[JavaScript Error: "The operation couldn't be completed. (OSStatus error -1728.) @[setTextRaw:field.m:436]" {file: "file:///Applications/Zotero.app/Contents/Resources/extensions/zoteroMacWordIntegration@zotero.org/components/zoteroMacWordIntegration.js" line: 227}]"

Assuming it works in a new document, you'll need to run through the Debugging Broken Documents steps in full.

For a very large document, particularly in Mac Word, which unfortunately can be slow, you may very well need to wait a while for all citations to be updated, and if you interrupt it you'll get an error. While you're still working on the document, you should indeed disable automatic citation updates from the plugin's document preferences window, though it'd be a good idea to do a manual refresh when you're able to let it go for a while just to make sure it completes properly (and to see how long it wil take) before your deadline. See Faster Citing in Large Documents for more info on that feature.

meiragold

I disabled automatic citation updates, and that worked for a bit. But now it's stopped working entirely. I'm fully gone through the debugging steps. What do I do now?

dstillman

What do you mean by "now it's stopped working entirely"? What exactly is happening?

Also, you haven't gone through the steps in full. If you follow them to the end, you will, by definition, either fix the problem or isolate it and be able to provide more information.

meiragold

I mean that 1) None of the Zotero functions are working on the document. I can't add/edit citations, the bibliography disappeared because I disabled citations. But nothing happens when I click refresh, add/edit bibliography, or documents preferences. I opened a brand new document as a test and added a citation fine. So clearly there is a problem with my document. 2) I have run through all the steps. I'm not sure what you mean by "if you follow them to the end, you will, by definition, fix or isolate the problem." Perhaps I don't understand the directions. I made a duplicate copy, I also tried copying and pasting the document into a new one, and neither work. I did the last step (no. 10). I went through the document removing sections one at a time. And no matter which parts I removed, the document still will not refresh or allow me to click anything on the tool bar. The document is long so I'll click refresh and even after 15 mins., nothing has happened. I've also checked and both zotero and word are up to date.

dstillman

And no matter which parts I removed, the document still will not refresh or allow me to click anything on the tool bar.

If you make a copy of the document, delete the entire contents, and try to insert a citation, are you able to?

If not, send the empty document that doesn't work to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread, and provide a Report ID from Zotero.

meiragold

Yes, I made a copy, deleted everything, and then I could insert a citation. What should I do next?

dstillman

This is the point of Step 10 on Debugging Broken Documents.

meiragold

FYI I went back to the big document again. It allowed me to add a citation. But now won't refresh.

dstillman

So you need to determine if the refresh problem is just that it's taking a long time and you need to wait longer if it's failing for some reason without an error message. It's much more likely the former.

Step 10 explains the quickest way to cut down your document so that you can test both inserting and the speed of refreshing. And if it's not just taking a while and there's a specific part of the document that's breaking it, it explains how to quickly isolate that citation. If you can end up with a small part of the document that reliably doesn't work, you've found the problem and should send us that document excerpt, and then replace it back in the main document.

But I'd guess that you're just not waiting long enough for the refresh, which, again, can take a while in a large document.

meiragold

Right, so I refreshed it before I went to bed, and it update my citations at some point. But there is still no bibliography and nothing happens when I add/edit bibliography.

meiragold

At this point, I just REALLY need to produce a bibliography. Where there used to be one, it's just showing this: 00/00/0000 00:00:00. Does this mean anything?

dstillman

And what happens if you just delete and reinsert the bibliography, and wait for it to finish?

I understand you're frustrated, but I really can't stress enough that the debugging steps — and Step 10 in particular — are how you can fix this. If you delete the bibliography and reinsert it and still get "00/00/0000 00:00:00", the way you debug that is by, in a copy of the document, removing half of the rest of the document — half of the citations that make up the bibliography — and clicking Refresh. If you then get a bibliography, you know that something you deleted was causing the problem, and can undo and continue following the steps with the other half of the document. If you still get the problem, you continue halving the document.

You can also just send us the document at support@zotero.org with a link to this thread and we can look at it, but Step 10 explains how you can cut down the document to find a problem and avoiding sending us your entire document.

vandenboogaard

Hi both,

It sounds like I am having the exact same issue with my PhD thesis as meiragold. Meiragold, did you find any solution that works?

Like you, I don't quite understand step 10 in the debugging process. dstillman, what does it mean to have a "broken citation"? It seems very impractical to try to isolate one broken citation in a document with thousands of them—though I am likewise frantic just to get a bibliography created so that I can submit my dissertation.

Thanks,

Vanessa

vandenboogaard

FYI I'm using Word for Max (version 16.32) and Zotero version 5.0.80

dstillman

It seems very impractical to try to isolate one broken citation in a document with thousands of them

That's the entire point of Step 10 — it explains how to do a "binary search", which would get you to a single page in a 1000-page document in about 10 cuts.

Unless you still have a problem after completely emptying out the existing document, that step is how you would find the part of the document that's causing trouble. (Or, if it's just the size of the document that's causing trouble, then cutting it in halves would also let you see how long it takes at smaller sizes.)

dstillman

But also, by far the easiest thing to try is simply deleting your existing bibliography at the end of the document and trying to reinsert one. If that doesn't work, you should say more about what exactly is happening when you try.

vandenboogaard

Thanks for the quick reply — will do so when I get back to my computer. Can you clarify what is a broken citation/ what causes it to break?

Thanks!

dstillman

Sometimes a field can get corrupted by the word processor or Zotero — for certain interactions with Track Changes, say — in a way that causes citation updating to break, or sometimes a citation is in an unexpected state that triggers an error in Zotero. That shouldn't happen normally, but if you're getting an error when inserting or updating citations or a bibliography in your document, but it still works in a new document, you'd need to narrow down the old document to identify the problem (and, ideally, send us an excerpt so that we can try to prevent it from happening in the future).

In a large document, it's possible you just need to wait longer for citation updating and bibliography generation to happen.

meiragold

Hi! I’m not sure if you’ve solved the issue or not...To be honest, step 10 did not work for me either. It could be that there were several corrupted citations in my 80,000+ word document. But no matter which sections I removed, I couldn't isolate the issue. Or it was so slow that it failed to complete any tasks (e.g. edit/add citation, insert bibliography, etc) and I got an error message. I eventually ran out of time to continue troubleshooting and also desperately needed a bibliography.

SO here’s what I did to make it work: First, under document preferences, make sure you have deselected "automatically update citations." Then I made sure all the pictures in my thesis were reduced in size to make the document itself smaller and easier to scroll through. Then I made sure any trace of the bibliography (including the title) were deleted. I copied the whole thing into another document. In that new document, I added a bibliography (it took several minutes but eventually spit it out). Then I highlighted the bibliography in the copy, and clicked "unlink citations." I then copied the new bibliography into the original document. Then I manually entered any additional bibliographic items. The pros about this method is that I ended up with a bibliography and when I added a new citation and clicked "refresh" it actually worked (it took a few minutes but it completed the task). The cons about this method is that you have to go through the bibliography and double-check everything. But I was going to do this anyway, so it was fine.

It seems to me that there's an issue with the new version of zotero with the feature to disable automatic citations in longer documents. The "refresh" works on individual citations, but no matter how many times I tried, it did not update my bibliography (it just disappeared and never came back). Adding/editing bibliography does not work when you have disabled automatic citations. Or at least that's my experience.

I hope you can figure yours out too!!