Problems with collaborative writing and sharing group library

cooperl09
I am writing a paper with a colleague and we are experiencing issues in going back and forth between us. I am hoping someone who has experience in this can help. We have created a group library and we are both contributing to references to it. We are working on a manuscript, both using MS Word, but on different platforms (Mac, Word 2003 in Win 7 and Word 2003 Win XP). We are working independently and writing sections which contain citations from the group library, then saving that version and sharing it
We have been getting errors where Zotero hangs when you try to update and then returns the message:
"Zotero experienced an error updating your document. citations is undefined"
or insert a new citation:
"This.registry [id] is undefined"

Any suggestions are welcome. Do all the citations in the manuscript have to be to the
group library? Some of the early ones were not so maybe that is causing the problems?
Thanks!
  • adamsmith
    yes, all citations need to be in the group library, but that shouldn't cause this particular problem (you should just get a "this item does not exist.... replace citation?" message).

    Some thoughts - you should all use the same Zotero version: 2.0.9 won't work with 2.1 citations (the document will upgrade the first time it's used with 2.1 and then can't be used with 2.0.9 anymore).

    Also, send in an error report and paste the ID here if needed
    http://www.zotero.org/support/reporting_bugs
  • cooperl09
    Hi Adam, thanks for the response.
    When I started working today, I did the sync and it worked fine, but I could not add anything or update from either the group library or my own.
    So, I updated to the newest version Z 2.1 and win word 3.1b1 (thought that might help).
    I could still not add anything or update from either the group library or my own.
    so I created a test version of the document and removed all the field codes from it.
    Started going through and replacing the citations being sure to use the ones in the group library. This seems to be working ok, except it will not create a bibliography.
    It says that "the current bibliogrphic style does not define a bibliography, choose another style. (but I can export a bibliography in this style from the library)

    I followed the instructions to report a bug: ID # 935478736
    Thanks
  • adamsmith
    That's not good... (for Zotero - you'll be fine eventually)
    which style are you using? Have you tried switching styles for test purposes?
  • cooperl09
    The style is Journal of Experimental Biology. I tried another one and it worked and switched back to JXB and now it is working too. Not sure what did it, but it seems to be working now. I will post a follow up if the problems continue
    :-)
  • cooperl09
    It may not be important but the Windows computer platforms are all actually Word 2007 (not sure about the version of word on the Mac)
  • avatarmh
    Might cooperI09 or AdamSmith explain how one shares a MS document or what is used?
  • adamsmith
    what exactly are you trying to do?
    I mean - sharing a MS document in this context just means sending or giving the .doc or .docx file to another person, I doubt that's your question, though, is it?
  • avatarmh
    Is that really what Cooper109 above means when s/he wrote: "We are working on a manuscript, both using MS Word, but on different platforms (Mac, Word 2003 in Win 7 and Word 2003 Win XP). We are working independently and writing sections which contain citations from the group library, then saving that version and sharing it."

    I thought they had attached/put the MS world doc into zotero and were working on it together (not at the same time since I realize zotero doesn't have that capabiity yet).
  • adamsmith
    edited January 16, 2012
    I thought they had attached/put the MS world doc into zotero and were working on it together (not at the same time since I realize zotero doesn't have that capabiity yet).
    I don't know what they did, but Zotero isn't very well suited for that, no.

    You can in principle use sync instead of sending the document back and forth by e-mail, but a) there is no advantage to that (if both of you work on it before syncing again that'd be a mess) and b) you probably would want the "papertrail" of the different versions sent by e-mail for safety; so if anything e-mail is better.
    I know some people use version control systems like git or svn for collaboration, though their advantages are really more significant when you use plain text based languages like LaTeX.
  • avatarmh
    Right. It's not for collaborative writing and has no version control capability. I wish some collaborative tools that do would facilitate zotero incorporation.
  • adamsmith
    Zotero works well with LyX through LyZ and with re-structured text using zotero-plain.
    LaTex (on which LyX is based) has it's own version control, re-structured text works with all standard version control systems.
  • cooperl09
    A couple of comments to clarify things here. I am sorry if I caused any confusion about using Zotero to do collaborative writing. We only use it for the citations part and work on the word document individually.
    But, if you are looking for a way to do that besides emailing it back and forth, here are 2 suggestions.
    Dropbox: This is like a cloud folder that you can share with others. We routinely use this for collaborative projects. It is not a version control system, but you can recovered deleted version. We just have each person save with some new identifier, such as their initials.
    Google docs: This is great for writing together, you can roll abck to previous version and is well integrated with Zotero. You just drag items from Zotero and drop them in.

    Currently, the shared Zotero libraries are working well.
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