Zotero and Word online

ElizabethGPearson
Dear Team

I'm in a very long document (113,000 words) on Word Online via onedrive, on a Mac (Office 365). Zotero keeps crashing and is very slow, and word too keeps crashing.

I am wondering - is this a onedrive compatability issue?

Any tips for fixes

Best!

Lizz
  • adomasven
    We'd need more info about your setup. Is this multiple machines or multiple people editing? What are the conditions under which you see crashing? Could you submit a Report ID?
  • ElizabethGPearson
    It's my mac, set up to a monitor, just me editing a 113,000 word document on onedrive ie word online.

    Zotero is taking about 45 seconds to a minute to update a citation - ie too long. Crashing. Word then crashing.

    I'm not running the latest mac update as I've had compatibility issues with Word in the past. I'll get you a report ID when it happens again.

    Thanks!
  • ElizabethGPearson
    Hi there

    I submitted a report with a lot of information - which I hope is about the latest problems.

    It's Report ID: 1302037330

    Best!

    Lizz
  • adomasven
    How many citations do you have in this document? Have you tried moving it out of onedrive and has that helped with insertion speed? Can you reproduce this error consistenly - if you go to the location in the document that caused the crash and try to insert/edit, do you see the crash again?
  • ElizabethGPearson
    Actually I have a lot of citations - more than 1000

    The insertion speed isn't actually helped as much as I had hoped by moving out of online Word - still super slow. And jumping the screen back to word as soon as the citation is entered, even if I am on other apps, such as chrome.

    I can't reproduce the error consistently no. Although I know that on some of the occasions I had the crash I was unable to put the citation in until I had come out of Word and Zotero and restarted both.

    I don't know if that helps?
  • ElizabethGPearson
    More crashing.. this is my latest Report ID number.. 1397506722

    I hope you can help? I have so much to do and this is becoming an issue.

    Best!

    Lizz
  • adomasven
    edited February 21, 2018
    Unfortunately Zotero (and other citation managers) do get slow with thousands of citations in a document. From the looks of your reports, Word is crashing during various operations and also likely due to the size of the document.

    Your best bet is to either install the dev build of the client, which will give you an option to delay automatic citation updates, speed up inserts and might prevent crashing, or to split up your document into smaller chunks/chapters, work on them separately and then recombine at the end.

    If you opt for the dev build, make frequent back-ups of the document as it includes a major rewrite of the integration code and could potentially (though not very likely) lead to corruption of citations. Splitting up the document is the less error-prone path.
  • ElizabethGPearson

    I will go for the split. It was split before into chapters, but on the advice of my supervisor I put them all together. To help them make sense. But needs must, so back to the chapters!

    Thanks for the help!

    Best

    Lizz
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