Zotero upgrade crashing Microsoft Word
Since the automatic update to zotero a couple of days ago, word is frequently crashing (i.e. error message and closing all open word documents) when I attempt to insert a reference. The error message is as follows:
"zotero experienced an error updating your document. The RPC server is unavailable. [cursorinfield:document.cpp]"
What can I do to stop this?
"zotero experienced an error updating your document. The RPC server is unavailable. [cursorinfield:document.cpp]"
What can I do to stop this?
That error message typically indicates that you have a broken citation in your document somewhere (though it usually doesn't make Word crash—that's odd).
Try to find the broken citation and replace it by following these steps carefully:
https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_troubleshooting#debugging_broken_documents
I am using Word 2013 (as part of Office 365 if that has any relevance?) on a university network. And most recent update to Zotero Standalone.
This does not just happen on one document. It is repeatedly happening on multiple documents. It almost invariably happens when I try to enter a reference for the first time (i.e. a fresh word doc with no potential for broken citations), and very often when I enter a new reference after opening an existing document (again there has been no problem with broken citations). I get the message 'word has stopped working' and sometimes the option to restart word, or often just 'close the program'. Word is often closing down multiple times in succession.
1. Open zotero installation folder (default
C:\Program Files (x86)\Zotero
)2. Navigate to
extensions\zoteroWinWordIntegration@zotero.org
3. Download test-v120xp-runtime.zip
4. Remove the contents of the folder you had opened and replace them with the contents from the zip (you will need to navigate to
zotero-word-for-windows-integration-test-v120xp-runtime
within the zip file).5. Restart Zotero
Use Zotero with Word as you do normally and report whether you still get any crashing (or, whether you don't)
Do you have a sense of what the problem might be? Should I ignore standalone updates for the moment (presume this is an old set of program files?)?
For what it's worth, you can use these files in the interim, which use the older versions of the libraries and shouldn't cause crashing. I do ask you to continue in helping us debug this, as we need to find a solution to produce the plugin that does not crash Word to be able to support new features and provide bugfixes.
EDIT: I'd originally posted the wrong link and edited after, so make sure you get the updated one, i.e. https://github.com/adomasven/zotero-word-for-windows-integration/archive/test-v120xp-vs2013.zip
This one time it still seemed to be caused in the same (myserious) way. It showed the same error and occured once I clicked 'add/edit citation' before the dialogue would show up. Unfortunately I didn't have debugging on at that time.
Generally though it works 99% of the cases, so I guess this patch would make a lot of people happy.
Thanks for the support!
I think that closing and reopening will automatically install new updates and that this will override the set of files I have changed (as instructions above) in extensions\zoteroWinWordIntegration@zotero.org ?
However, I am having the same problem again today.
I am wondering whether this issue is related to the 'speed' at which the university system is operating (sorry I'm not very clued up on the technical language) and the new updates to zotero being 'too much for it'! The university system is getting higher volumes of traffic again today (post Christmas holiday) and I have noticed that documents are back to taking longer to load.
I'll keep testing and report back.
After that, let's try this version https://github.com/adomasven/zotero-word-for-windows-integration/archive/test-v120xp-vs2013-cleanup.zip
I tried Simon's build and it's been 4 days I guess without crashing. So maybe that's the one that works best?
Thanks.
Will report back either way.