OSStatus error-1708

michael.loadenthal · August 13, 2015

I have been using Zotero for years and love it. Now that I'm editing a 1,000+ citation, 170,000 word file, it keeps stalling for up to 20 minutes and often crashing.

The most recent error I'm getting is:

"Zotero experienced an error updating your document.

The operation couldn't be completed. (OSStatus error-1708.) @[selectField:field.m:322]"

This is one of a growing host of problems Zotero has been throwing at me. I have the error # below and hope to get this resolved. I teach 5 courses (2 at GMU where Zotero is housed) and regularly teach my students how to use Zotero. With my recent inability to keep it running, I may stop doing that.

Error report: 328354945

adamsmith · August 13, 2015

I'm not sure what the error message is -- Simon would know more, but it may well be a memory issue -- but you're really hitting what Zotero can do document-length-wise. Is there no way you can edit this in chunks and only do a final merge?

edit, btw.

and regularly teach my students how to use Zotero. With my recent inability to keep it running, I may stop doing that.

there's really no need for threats of this kind. People will do their best to help you anyway.

michael.loadenthal · August 13, 2015

Adam,

The problem with splitting it into multiple files (which is how I built the document), is that when I go to recombine them, I run into the same problem. This also creates a ton of problems with getting an accurate total word count for the total project which is very important since I am doing final edits with a tight word count limit.

Hopefully Simon can tell me more. What is happening, when it does not crash, is that I can make a citation (or an edit), and then wait about 10 minutes until it applies. If I make a second edit/addition before the first one has applied, it crashes. Doing edits one every 10 minutes is not working for me.

As far as my "threat", I'm sorry if it came across that way but you misread me. I LOVE Zotero and promote it all the time. The semester starts in 20 days and it is simply the reality that if I can not get the software working on my machine, I can not teach it to my students. There is no threat....but I can't teach software that all of a sudden has stopped functioning. I appreciate all the help I've received over the years and understand the labor required to run a project like this.

Sorry if it came off as anything but frustration and a bit of sadness that if all else fails, I'd have to go and learn a new suite.

DWL-SDCA · August 13, 2015

As adamsmith wrote above you are working with an extraordinarily large file. You don't say what word processor you are using but in my experience both Word and Libre/OpenOffice begin to have problems with a file that size without Zotero in the mix. You also didn't mention the bibliographic style you are using. The processor, RAM and OS of your machine will also make for differences in responsiveness.

Seven years ago as I was completing a doctoral thesis I moved from Endnote to Zotero because Zotero was much faster. I was using two computers one with 4 and the other a machine with 16 Gb of RAM. The difference between speed of citation insertion was about a factor of 10...from a few moments to nearly instantaneous.

The precision of a word count using recent versions of Word is said to begin to widen at about 50K words. Indeed, the same large Word document, moved to a second computer, and after simply moving a block of text can have a count that differs by 3 to 4% from the earlier count on the first machine.

It may seem as though one should be able to make minor changes to a document after merging sections but the edits really need to be made in section and document merged again.

adamsmith · August 13, 2015

yeah, the software does matter. Specifically, Word for Mac (at least the old versions, not sure about the 2016 one) is several orders of magnitude slower than Word for Windows and LibreOffice.

As for Word Count -- isn't there an issue with Word count and Zotero citations?

michael.loadenthal · August 13, 2015

thanks everyone. For what it's worth I have tried it on a MacBook Pro (2.8 GHz Intel Core i7, 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3) running Word for Mac 2011 (14.4.9). I also tried it on as well as on a new iMac though I don't know the specs.

I guess the problem really is processing power/RAM. I figured I was just doing something wrong when it was taking 10+ minutes for a change to refresh. I guess I'll break it back down into half chapters, do my editing and reassemble it.

adamsmith · August 13, 2015

Yeah, it's the Word for Mac 2011 that's the big factor here. The API is massively slower than for all other products. I'd be curious if Word 2016 for Mac is faster -- it very well may be.

To be clear, a document of this size still won't be fun to work with and I do think we'll need to develop better solutions for this issue, but I'd expect this to be a factor 5-10 faster on Word for Windows (and hopefully the new Word for Mac).