google docs: option to edit existing citation unpredictably unavailable

I am editing a google doc in chrome on a windows 10 machine, but similar issues on Chromebook.
I have been using Gdocs flawlessly with Zotero for about a year, but all of a sudden it began to operate strangely, none more so than today.
I am working on a doc with Zotero citations. I put in 2 in the span of about 1 minute. Placing the cursor in the last citation I entered, it did not pop up "Edit with Zotero", instead it pops up a Zotero.org hyperlink. The previous citation, however, and MOST of the others in the document still showed the "edit" option.
I went to forum to see if anyone else had the problem, but when I went back to the document, now most of the citations had turned to Zotero.org links. I had not changed a thing in the document in the 10 minute interim. Rechecking, I see that the citations seem to randomly vary between the 2 options each time I place the cursor in them.
I compiled a bibliography and that seemed to work perfectly, so the citation links are not lost. This makes it an annoying, but not a critical issue because I can always reconstruct the particular citation set that I want to edit, but it is strange.

This is the only copy of the document that is open on any computer and it is not shared.



  • Could you submit a Report ID from the Zotero connector?
  • I hope I have done this correctly, but I got an error report ID 1558610994
  • That's from Zotero. Can you provide a Report ID from the Zotero Connector after this occurs?
  • The random popup response occurs whenever I click into a citation in Gdocs.

    I opened up Connector options>advanced. Couldn't find "report ID" but I enabled "debug output logging" and clicked "Submit output" after going back and clicking into several citations. It provided the following number:
    D1655950565
    Not sure if that is what you wanted.

  • @aarwdc I'm not sure if I'm reading the debug log right, but it seems that perhaps you are refreshing the document in Google Docs? When the document is initially loading, it is expected that you will see google docs links that link to zotero.org instead of the "Edit with Zotero" popup. After the page fully loads clicking on links should start displaying "Edit with Zotero" properly. If that's not the case, can you produce a video of the bug where you click in the document while it's not loading and you get the zotero.org link and "Edit with Zotero" interchangeably. Upload that video somewhere online and either post a link here or send it to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread.
  • Here is link to video. The random changes are not happening, but what is happening is the opposite of what you just described. Clicking in a citation for the first time pops "edit with Zotero", but successive clicks bring up the link.
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N3phZeBp5L80-1C5em2UKdlIfusfQJHu/view?usp=sharing
  • @aarwdc: That video isn't public.
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