Do you get any speed benefits if you minimize the Tags window? I've heard having the Tag window open can slow down Zotero. Also, I wonder if choice of citation style can make a difference - such as using a number based style versus author-date style.

edited to correct errors that auto-spell check inserted

The tag selector window is at the bottom of the left column. If you can see several tags at the bottom of the column, then it is 'open' and can be slowing things. At the bottom of the collections and the top of the tags list there is a bar with a thingy. drag the bar to the very bottom of the column so that tags are no longer visible.

That said, adding references to a lengthy document can take a few seconds -- especially on an older computer with a slower processor and less memory that more recent models.

One way to get back up-to-speed is to separate your manuscript into several smaller documents or chapters and only at the end (or when you must submit a draft) do you combine them to generate a bibliography.

Be certain that you keep regular backups of all drafts and each iteration of each of your chapters. I recommend that you not remove the field codes within any of your documents. Although I do recommend that, unless your professor demands otherwise, you turn in printed or pdf versions. There are many things that can damage a live document if it isn't handled correctly. These include saving the document in another file type, making edits that damage one or more field codes etc. I recommend implementing your professor's edits and change requests by hand and not by cutting from your professor's document and pasting parts into your live document.

I don't believe Gurdas was recommending that you switch to a different style -- only pointing out that with some styles there can be greater demands on computing capacity.

Are you certain that Mandeley is quicker than Zotero when inserting references into a document of similar length. My students who have switched from Mandeley to Zotero report that Zotero is quicker.

Hi, I have the same problem. My document is about 30 pages (Microsoft Word), I use Zotero standalone with about 200 documents in the folder I use for the document and in total 1000 documents in my entire database.

When I add a citation to my document, after I press enter, the blue loading bar takes about 5 to 15 seconds to fill and add the citation. It is really annoying because in the meantime, I cannot type anything in Word. I have tried to type while the blue bar is loading, and the typing is subject to lags. Once it even caused Word to crash completely.

Any solution one year later ?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Hi, thanks for the comments, but as a previous user mentioned, I am also limited to a footnotes style of references (such as OSCOLA, which is the one I am using) because I am in a legal disciple.

So, unfortunately, switching to author-date in brackets is not possible.

Thanks though.

@johnsmithtexas you can still switch back to the note style as the last step before submission.

@LiborA Yes, I understand that, but I have so far 200 footnotes (99 percent of them added with Zotero only, and a few of them added with Word footnotes that only contains text, no citation).

The problem is that I would switch right now from OSCOLA to APA style which is a common in-text in brackets style, then at the end of my work, when switching back to OSCOLA, I fear that the correct positioning of the footnotes would be messed up.

Could you enlighten me with that? I am going to try that with a dummy document right now.

@adomasven Ok thanks

@LiborA I just tried switching to APA in a dummy document, and then adding a new citation, it was nearly instantaneous. Then, when switching back to OSCOLA, it seemed all the footnotes went back to the correct place. So, I think I will try that with my real document (and of course a saved copy before making the switch, just in case something goes wrong).

Thanks again for suggesting that solution.

Would be great though, if they could improve the speed with footnotes citation style.

@adomasven Just one last question, before realising I could mess up my Word doc, I interacted a few times with it before the citation was properly added. Is there any way I could check if the document is corrupted ?

@LiborA I have a first draft submission later today (Brussels time) and it is still a very rough draft. Final submission is end of August, so still time, but not super far in the future. I guess I will update Zotero after that.