Zotero Word Dialog stuck on side, unable to move

asghar.ali.fakhri
When using the citation tool in Word, for some reason the dialog opens on the far right of the screen, and half of it is hidden. I cannot drag the dialog box back into the center of the screen. Any other way to move it back toward the center? It keeps popping up that way despite reinstalling the plugin, restarting all applications, etc.
  • Gitty K
    I have the same problem using Open Office (but haven't tried uninstalling)...
  • dstillman
    Try closing Firefox and deleting localstore.rdf from your Firefox profile directory. It contains window settings and will be recreated when you reopen Firefox.

    Any reason why Firefox would think your screen is larger than it is? Multiple monitor support? Is this on a laptop?
  • Gitty K
    Thanks a lot Dan, that did the trick for me. I do work on a laptop, but without external monitor...
  • ngrusz1
    edited June 4, 2008
    I have encountered this same problem as well. I think it has to do with the fact that the citation window that pops up in Word doesn't seem to have a container (there is no title bar, no minimize/maximize/close buttons in the top right corner, and the window doesn't take up a spot on the task bar). After looking at some screenshots of the Mac version of the plugin, it doesn't look like that version suffers from this problem. Perhaps it's a bug in the Windows Word plugin? Does anyone know if there's a bug report on this or plans to address it in the future?
  • dstillman
    I think it has to do with the fact that the citation window that pops up in Word doesn't seem to have a container [...] After looking at some screenshots of the Mac version of the plugin, it doesn't look like that version suffers from this problem
    We have to use a special type of window on Windows to get it to appear in front of Word.

    One question—are you experiencing this for the document preferences window or the add citation window or both?

    We're working on a fix for this (and, since we can't reproduce it, it's better if you don't try the localstore.rdf fix in the meantime).
  • ngrusz1
    edited June 4, 2008
    Right now only my Citation Window is off to the side. My Document Preferences Window is pretty centered. But since I didn't really do anything to cause my Citation Window to move (at least, nothing that I can think of) it seems possible that my Document Prefs Window could fall victim to this issue as well since it's the same type of window. It's worth noting that while my Citation Window is off to the side (the left side of the screen in my case), it's not actually off the screen; the left side of the window lines up with the left edge of my screen. If I click on the Multiple Sources button, however, the window will expand off the screen -- it doesn't realign itself with the edge and so the collections column becomes almost unusable since I can't really see it.
  • dstillman
    edited June 4, 2008
    Can you e-mail the localstore.rdf file from your Firefox profile folder to support@zot....org?

    We made a change to the way the citation window is positioned in 1.0.4 (to allow its position to persist on OS X, where it can be a real window), and that's probably what caused this problem. There's an easy fix, but theoretically the new method is better, since it centers the window in relation to the parent window rather than in relation to the entire screen—or, at least, that's what it's supposed to do. Looking at your localstore.rdf file may help us figure out what went wrong.
  • ngrusz1
    edited June 4, 2008
    Certainly. The email is on the way. I also checked the Report Errors function in my Action menu and I noticed that some errors had been reported, so I submitted them (report ID#667738275). This report may or may not be related to this problem (looking at the error I'm guessing it's not); I haven't noticed any other weird behavior in Zotero but I don't know how old the error is either, so I'm sending it along just in case.

    It might also be worth noting that I am using Zotero on a laptop that has a widescreen display (1280x800).
  • dstillman
    OK, this should be fixed in the latest dev build.

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