Zotero/Word connection EXTREMELY slow

mdsimants

I’m running Microsoft Word (16.52) and Zotero (5.0.97-beta.42+d8af5b792) on a 2019 MacBook Air (details below). My document is roughly 17000 words and citations are taking about 90-120 seconds to populate via the Word plugin. Is this normal behavior? If not, what should I do to troubleshoot? Shutting everything down and restarting does not seem to help.

Laptop details:
MacBook Air (2019)
1.6 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5
16 GB 2133 MHZ LPDDR3
macOS Big Sur (11.5.2)

djross3

1. Disable automatic updates (and only refresh when you're done writing). This will make things a lot faster (although at a certain length it may still be slow).
2. Write in chunks in a separate document, then copy and paste back to your main document.
3. If necessary, use Windows (e.g. to refresh the final document).

Search the forum for older discussions about this. Word for Mac doesn't allow fast integration for Zotero or other software, so this is a limit that can't be solved by Zotero.

See here, for example, for more: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/90350/dead-slow#latest

nshackleton89

I have had the same problem, so disabled automatic updates. Then tried to add in a reference at the popup wouldn't work and zotero lights up, like I am meant to go back to that program. Now cannot opening document preferences (via plugin on word on mac) so change back. I am writing my PhD, so this is a serious issue. Please help me!

dstillman

@nshackleton89: I'd guess that the Document Preferences window is just behind your Zotero window.

nshackleton89

I restarted both Zotero and word and it seems to have fixed itself. If it happens again I will make sure I bring everything to the front so I can see what happened - thanks!