Report ID: 36230937

Engraved
edited December 12, 2016
Report ID: 36230937

When I create a new zotero field in my word 2016 document it oftentimes, not allways, crashes producing the following error message:
https://s23.postimg.org/wtrxe6vyj/zotero_error.png


Steps to reproduce:
- While I cannot fully reproduce the event, it seems to happen in documents using more than ~30 citations.
- Furthermore, after the first error, every opening of the word document and inserting a citation in the same place as before leads to reproduction of the crash.
- Sometimes when using the word autorecovery routine, parts of the field are restored and appear with grey background at the location selected but without any zotero citation. Deleting this field tends to solve the problem for this certain location, but it usually reappears when inserting a citation at a different location.
- Deleting the space where I tried to insert the citation, resetting formats, overwriting with random letters and then again trying to insert also sometimes provides for a solution, however not allways.

I would be verry happy if someone knew how to help me.
Thank you all!
  • Engraved
    any ideas?
  • adamsmith
    Any citations in tables or figure captions in the documents in question?
  • Engraved
    Thanks, no tables in the document, and technically no citations in captions, but yes, there are citations near some figures:
    https://s29.postimg.org/6ynwzqyyv/zotero_error_2.png

    Another thing I noticed, the auto recovered word documents tend to mess with other field entries such as "title" or "author". In the following picture, nor should the fields be highlighted, nor underlined:
    https://s29.postimg.org/4im3lwgw7/zotero_error_3.png

    I hope that might help.
  • adamsmith
    This is a very rare error -- I think I've seen this 3 or 4 times over the years. It also appears to mainly affect German users (???). Do you use track changes in the document? Comments?
  • Engraved
    Weird. No, the document does not use track changes or comments.
  • Engraved
    The error is now getting constant. Might be about 1 in 2 times I insert or edit (!) a zotero field that my word crashes instantly. This is... let's say bothersome.

    I have a new screenshot from a crash in a spanish version of the document (which had 'track changes' enabled) and where you can see the remainings of a field when autorecovered.
    https://s24.postimg.org/pkz2oeied/zotero_error_4.png
    I would also post the field code when the field is deactivated, but it's to large for a screenshot and at least I am unable to copy it.

    However, in a second screenshot the 'track changes' somehow documents how the error is messing with other text fields. This was not done manually.
    https://s24.postimg.org/qenhi5ihh/zotero_error_5.png

    I am really, really looking forward to your help. If you provide me with an email or something I could send you the document.
  • Engraved
    bump.
  • Engraved
    I am still facing the same issues. Is there anything you need from me to be able to help me? It's not that I can just forget about this issue and actually I don't want to migrate to another citation manager either.
  • adamsmith
    I unfortunately don't really have any ideas on what's going on.
    Do I understand correctly that this is limited to one or two documents?
    You could try running through https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_troubleshooting#debugging_broken_documents
  • Engraved
    edited January 3, 2017
    Thanks for the reply, I understand this seems to be a tricky issue. To be precise, the issue is occurring in almost all of my academic papers since more or less 1,5 years, it is just becoming more and more annoying, seemingly related to the length of the paper. However, I base all my papers on the same template I created some time ago, so there might be a clue in that. I am running through the troubleshooting list and will see if I can boil it down to a certain or some citations.

    Just one more question, I was reading the threat about in-caption citations ( https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/20380/broken-document-due-to-reference-in-image-caption ) and I am wondering if the same that goes for captions applies to my workaround captions, like "Quelle: Ullrich (1999: 5)" in this screenshot:
    https://s29.postimg.org/6ynwzqyyv/zotero_error_2.png

    technically these are no captions, however, they are related to the image's position since the image is formatted using "keep with next paragraph". does this make any sense to you?
    Also, not sure if this might have been fixed since then, but I am not getting any kind of warning from zotero when inserting a citation in a caption. Not in this document, nor in a new one.
  • adamsmith
    The template would certainly be a place to look -- is this a template in the Word sense, i.e. a .dot(m) file, or just a Word doc you start from?
  • Engraved
    the latter, it is just a word document I formatted some time ago to be the starting point.
  • adamsmith
    that shouldn't matter, but given that you seem to be almost the only person with this issue, still worth looking into.
    The image non-caption caption: I wouldn't have thought that'd be a problem, but since I'm guessing that that's another thing that distinguishes your documents from most others, it's certainly worth looking into. This is Word for Windows?
  • Engraved
    Thank you for the comments. Yes, it is word for windows and I might try to delete these "non-captions" to see what happens.
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