Zotero freezing for period of time when entering material in right hand column.

ktwig2 · September 11, 2013

Have recently added a large number of PDF files as attachments to items in our group library. Wondering whether Zotero has a capacity limit? Now finding that when entering information about the item into right hand column (information, notes or tag) there is often a significant delay ie Zotero seems to freeze for 10 secs or so before can continue entering data. On previous posts it seemed that automatic tagging function might be contributing to this but it has been turned off. Would appreciate any suggestions.
Msllee

adamsmith · September 12, 2013

what is the total number of items in your Zotero library?
http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/item_count

dstillman · September 12, 2013

Also, provide a Debug ID for an example operation that causes a freeze.

If you have a huge number of tags, closing the tag selector in the bottom left can help, though that shouldn't be necessary for most people.

ktwig2 · September 18, 2013

When last saving our Zotero library it provided the info that we had 4,387 items using 8.95 GB. We are a team of five historians using Zotero to share source material so almost every parent item has a child item attachment. Many of these PDF attachments are very large eg 68,000KB or more. I now have a feeling that this is the problem. When I place a number of these PDFs as attachments on Zotero it seems I might be asking it to synch too much. I have noticed the 'synch with Zotero server' icon going around almost constantly lately and another team member tells me that material I added seven days ago has still not synched and become accessible on her library.
Thankyou also for Dan's message re the Debug ID. The problem is that Zotero does not freeze all the time or always when I attempt a particular function. An example of when it might happen is when I am locating and then saving newspaper articles to Zotero as PDF attachments. I have to enter information manually in the right hand field for such archival items but often Zotero will freeze for 10 secs or more as I am entering eg the date of publication. Again perhaps this is because I am overloading it? Would appreciate your thoughts.

adamsmith · September 19, 2013

hmm - Dan knows more about this, but afaik large files and ongoing file up or downloads shouldn't affect speed dramatically, especially since I'm assuming those large files are scans, so Zotero isn't indexing any text.
But if there are other sync issues, those might cause slowdowns.
Your best bet is really a debug ID that covers such a delay.

Also, I'm wondering about
"When last saving our Zotero library it provided the info that we had 4,387 items using 8.95 GB."
where/how exactly did it provide that info? Did you follow the instructions here? http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/item_count - that's the number we need (and it wouldn't have included a GB number, that's why I'm a bit confused). 5000 items would certainly not be a problem, but if you have ~5000 attachments the total number of items would likely be much higher and could go part-way towards explaining delays.