Reference in Word is broken

onedayonenoodle

I kept receiving an error message from my document, and it prompted me to visit this page: https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/debugging_broken_documents

Following the advice, I copied the content of my document to a blank document. Still the same error.

Then I removed all the field code, turning them into normal text, and copied the text to a blank document, still resulting in the same error.

Finally, I used Paste special .... > Formatted text (RTF) to a blank document, and tada, no error!

Or I thought so, but when I tried to edit, the same error....

dstillman

You'll need to follow the steps through to the end to isolate the problematic part.

adamsmith

If the error persists after pasting RTF, that's really odd though. What exactly is the error?

dstillman

Yeah, just pasting RTF wouldn’t show a Zotero error, so this is some general Word problem. But the debugging steps would be how you would find the part of the document that’s breaking Word in any case.

onedayonenoodle

Thanks. What i'm doing now is exactly that. Instead of copying the whole 50 pages, I'm copying (without field code) and adding references back again section by section while making backups. At some point, something will happen!

I didn't take the screenshot, but the same error complaining that there was a problem.

dstillman

That's not what it says to do, though. It says to do a binary search, cutting by halves. It takes no more than 10 cuts, regardless of the size of the document.

onedayonenoodle

Somehow, the step by step copy and paste using RTF worked. Now the entire document is with fully updated references!

Bad news is that I could not identify the source of the trouble.

onedayonenoodle

"Zotero experienced an error updating your document.

Would you like to view troubleshooting instructions?"

After saving the whole document, the same error came back!

I suspect it could be file name...


And it is!

This name caused the above error:

Nakamura_2017_BZ CZ in PD_Text_2021-08-26zot.docx

Then I renamed the same file to

Nakamura2017.docx

and Zotero is working as normal.

I thought I avoided including space, but I noticed there was a space (between BZ and CZ) in the bad name!

adomasven

Could you submit a Report ID from Zotero after getting the document with the broken filename?

onedayonenoodle

I was able to reproduce the issue perfectly.
1868594579

adomasven

Is this file saved on OneDrive? That might be the reason for the error, filenames with spaces don't work for some OneDrive users, but we have not been able to fix that yet.

onedayonenoodle

Yes. It was on OneDrive and I had a space in the file name (but failed to see it)!