Blocked by file block settings inserting footnotes or bibliography

josephlookofsky
Can anyone tell this Zotero layman (1) what the error message below means, (2) why I suddenly get it now (after weeks of problem-free editing my Word-doc), (3) and how I can fix it quickly/easily??
I translate from the Danish:
"This error occurs when you open a Microsoft Office file-type which is blocked by settings for file-blocking in the Center for security and rights administration".
When I close the message, the text of the footnote in question "disappers", and my only option is to close the whole document (without saving this unwanted change)
  • adamsmith
    Second report of this recently - since Zotero's Word integration hasn't actually changed, my guess would be that Word changed a default security setting. See if you can enable macros or .dot files in said security center.
  • josephlookofsky
    Many thanks, Adam. In the error message there was a link to these instructions (for Word 2007), which worked:
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922849/da
  • josephlookofsky
    Oh, the English version is:
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922849/en
  • kriskard
    I'm having similar issues. I have reinstalled both Zotero for Firefox, and the word plugin. In a new word file, the add-in is there, the plugin opens when clicking "new citation", and I can type in the name for my reference and find it in the library, and then when clicking enter the file setting error message appears.

    I got a hint about rtf-files in some forum (I have spent my day in these forums) and found this very recent announcement from Microsoft http://blogs.technet.com/b/srd/archive/2014/03/24/security-advisory-2953095-recommendation-to-stay-protected-and-for-detections.aspx

    Could this have anything to do with my problem? In the trust center, the line involving rtf-files are greyed out, and cannot be altered.. maybe because this security advisory was implemented by my company? I tried to work around it by including zotero in my "trusted locations", but this did not solve my problem. According to Microsoft though, this should keep the "Trust Center Settings" from being activated.. Maybe I did not choose the correct folder for zotero? The startup-folder with the zotereo.dot is already (as is standard) a trusted location.

    Please please help :)
  • Simon
    It seems that a bunch of system administrators are disabling RTF support in Word to avoid the security advisory linked above. Unfortunately, we don't have a solution besides asking your system administrator to re-enable RTF support in Word, or waiting until Microsoft fixes the security issue in RTF import.
  • aurimas
    Couldn't you just save the file as docx? (unless you have a specific reason for using RTF, I don't see much advantage to keeping it as RTF)
  • adamsmith
    I thought the problem was that citeproc-js generates RTF, no?
  • aurimas
    I see. Looking at the code, it seems that Zotero Word extension creates a temporary RTF file in the user's TEMP directory and that operation appears to get blocked. Unfortunately, Word is smart enough where you can't set the TEMP folder as your trusted location.

    I don't have any better ideas than having Zotero write the temporary file to some directory other than the TEMP location and allow users to set that as a trusted location. Obviously this would require a Word plugin patch and it's not ideal to place temporary file outside of TEMP. I suppose by default this could still be TEMP, but could be overridden by an environment variable like ZOTERO_TEMP. Quite hackish.

    I'm afraid, though, that even if Microsoft fixes this issue some time soon, the IT may not remove RTF restrictions for a long time (if ever).
  • kriskard
    Any hints on getting this solved using trusted locations would be highly appreciated. Is there any hack I can implement myself? For instance change the location for these temporary rtf-files? Maybe Zotero is planning on changing their use of rtf-files..? My guess is that if we insist on using rtf, while Microsoft has an issue with them.. well, we will have to give in at some point..
  • Simon
    I suspect it would take us longer to rewrite our code not to use RTF than it will take Microsoft to fix their security advisory. Additionally, RTF is a sufficiently common format that that university IT will probably re-enable it sooner or later once the security issue is fixed.

    On your end, you could ask your IT department to use a different mitigation strategy that does not entirely disable RTF, as described on the page you linked to above. We could also consider Aurimas's idea above, although that would only work if the security policy imposed by IT allows you to add new trusted locations.
  • Simon
    Microsoft released a security update to address this on April 8. If your university is still blocking RTF files, tell them to apply this patch and remove the block.
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