Zotero gets stuck periodically adding or editing citation

Debug ID: D1501665096
Report ID: 1227615113

Every now and then, when I try to either edit a reference or add a new reference in MS Word, Zotero freezes. This is an example when I was trying to add a new citation:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VagRetZY6bVQQVBmX5XniP0tcsc8ltNW/view?usp=sharing

While this is when I was trying to edit an existing one:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jfm2EVPCm6fDDqeRGHXJB3wiKz-_wMns/view?usp=sharing

When this happens, the blue-on-red progress bar stays in the pictured position for ever, and I can do nothing other than quit word, force-quit Zotero, and then start both up again and hope that nothing got corrupted. The last time it happened, I had debug output on. I tried submitting, but that ended up with this error:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LkXhQYtv0PdbEa0ZARBnUZHCE_Ao1OAr/view?usp=sharing

So I had to force-quite Zotero, start again, and submit debug output (that's the ID at the top of this message). I have ~130 citations in the document, so more than a handful, but also not something that a citation manager should have trouble handling.
  • This happened again just now, Zotero has been frozen trying to add a new citation:

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ivg6DU1iecwbnHEd44DMclmlUr-r57sI/view?usp=sharing

    I hit "Help > Report Error", got the report ID 160975909. Not sure if that ID refers to what's happening right now or some previous (non-fatal) error.

    I switched from Mendeley to Zotero because I got tired of bugs in the Mendeley interface (and the Zotero interface is better, IMO), so I'm kind of disappointed now because Mendeley at least never froze on me like this.
  • What exact version of Word?

    A Debug ID on its own isn't useful — it has to actually show the problem you're reporting occurring. The one you provided above just seems to show a sync, not anything related to this.

    You can leave debug output logging enabled and clear the output periodically from Help → Debug Output Logging to keep the log from growing too big while you're waiting for this to occur. (It should automatically purge old lines if it gets too big, but you still might trouble submitting it.)

    130 citations is obviously fine in general.
  • It's Word that is part of Office 365. If I do 'Word > About Microsoft Word', I get 'Microsoft Word for Mac Version 16.43'.

    OK, so what is the procedure for submitting debug output for this? When Zotero
    freezes, I can do nothing (including submitting debug output), I have to force quit Zotero. If I do that, then restart Zotero and submit debug output, will that do? That's what I (thought I) did for the debug ID I submitted.
  • edited November 24, 2020
    OK, this just happened again, this time Zotero was able to submit debug output, ID D795498948. I was also able to view it, and this is what it says:


    [error output removed — D.S.]
  • (We only need the id, not the output.)

    @adomasven will need to look at this.
  • @sourishbasu In Zotero document preferences do you have "Automatic citation updates" unticked?
  • Yes, I have that unchecked. I hit "Refresh" manually when I need to.
  • Next time you use Zotero for citing and/or testing this issue could you run it by opening the Terminal and running "/Applications/Zotero.app/Contents/MacOS/zotero -ZoteroDebugText" instead. When you run into this issue, go into the terminal window and look for a line which says "Error: complete() method already called on document". There should be additional lines regarding this error next to it. Could you copy the debug log info including and surrounding this line? If there are multiple occurrences of this please include them all, and paste them on hastebin.com, pastebin.com or somewhere similar and post the log here.
  • OK, will do. I tried this recently, but then Zotero didn't get stuck. Also, my Word document using Zotero was finished, so I didn't need to use Zotero as intensively. Perhaps that's why the error didn't occur again.
  • Ok. If you ever run into this again, please follow the instructions above to generate debug information.
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