Inserting citations extremely slow (+5 mins) with Mac 2011, large document & large database
I am running OX 10.5.8 with a 2.4 GHz processor, just updated Zotero 2.1, latest (3.1.1) Mac Word Plugin, Firefox 3.6.
My document (a PhD thesis) is now about 27,000 words long and has more than 500 citations, with about 300 individual items in the bibliography. When I attempt to insert a new citation, Firefox will hang with the scrolling colour wheel for approximately 5 minutes before showing the "insert citation" window(enough time to go the toilet and come back, the window finally appearing when I arrive back into my office).
Please help me. This is literally making my life miserable. I have been happily using Zotero since I started this document and I cannot switch to EndNote or Mendeley at this stage. This problem only started occurring since upgrading to Word 2011.
What can I do to resolve this issue? I have to insert dozens of new citations every time I revise the document and the length of time it is taking to insert only one citation is so extremely time consuming and frustrating it has actually brought me to tears. Please tell me what to do! I beg you! For my sanity!
My document (a PhD thesis) is now about 27,000 words long and has more than 500 citations, with about 300 individual items in the bibliography. When I attempt to insert a new citation, Firefox will hang with the scrolling colour wheel for approximately 5 minutes before showing the "insert citation" window(enough time to go the toilet and come back, the window finally appearing when I arrive back into my office).
Please help me. This is literally making my life miserable. I have been happily using Zotero since I started this document and I cannot switch to EndNote or Mendeley at this stage. This problem only started occurring since upgrading to Word 2011.
What can I do to resolve this issue? I have to insert dozens of new citations every time I revise the document and the length of time it is taking to insert only one citation is so extremely time consuming and frustrating it has actually brought me to tears. Please tell me what to do! I beg you! For my sanity!
Also, delete the bibliography from the end of your document-- Zotero has to update it each time you modify or add a citation, so you can save processing time by waiting to insert it until you actually are ready to submit the manuscript.
What else could be causing the problem?
(If the delay is occurring on entirely new citations, we can at least be sure that the citation processor is not causing the delay.)
The delay occurs when I insert any new citation, not when inserting a reference into an existing citation.
The first citation takes about 5 minutes, but even 2nd and 3rd citations take over 3 minutes.
From a UI point of view, what is somewhat annoying (besides the time lag) is that no indication is given of what is happening. The citations window just fails to appear for about a minute or so, and FF becomes unresponsive. Word does remain responsive, and while this is better than being unresponsive without UI feedback, I never know how safe it is to keep typing while I'm waiting for the "insert citation" window to pop up.
It's a judgement call for the core devs, but it might be possible to implement an optional "fast insert mode" for large documents, that requires only input data for the immediate citation being edited, and does not attempt to preserve correctness throughout the document by updating surrounding citations on the fly (the idea being that the document would periodically be updated manually with "Refresh" to touch up formatting). If a move is made in that direction, the citation processor (which I maintain) can certainly be adapted to the task without much trouble.
Having used a PC before, Zotero worked practically instantly, with barely any delay. Why is it so much slower on Mac? As far as it seems to me, transferring a bibliographical entry into a word footnote from a database is not a particularly performance intensive operation, or am I wrong?
Thank you so much for your help.
Thank you also for your explanation about regarding the steps that Zotero follows when adding a footnote. In general MS Office for Mac is by far not as good as the Windows version.
In any case, I will continue working happily with Zotero, even if I have to wait a few seconds here or there. Thank you so much for your excellent work!
I have tried most or all of the solutions posted in discussions concerning Zotero being slow, and have not had any positive results.