Mac Word 2008 2.02a with Zotero 2.0b3 nothing happens

jmarkow
I'm using Mac Word 2008 with the 2.02a plugin and Zotero 2.0b3 with a fresh install of Firefox 3.0.10 in OS X Leopard (10.5.7). When I try to use any of the commands under the AppleScript menu from within Word nothing happens--no errors, simply nothing. To see if this had to do with my Python installation (latest Enthought distribution), I tested things from the command line. Interestingly, things appear to work perfectly there. For instance, if I open a new document and use any of these commands in Terminal.app while in the Zotero program directory ~/Documents/Microsoft\ User\ Data/Word\ Script\ Menu\ Items/Zotero/:

python MacWord.py addCitation
python MacWord.py addBibliography
python MacWord.py refresh

etc.

They all work. I've also tried to look at the Zotero debug logs by running Firefox from the command line, but I didn't seem to find anything pertinent (i.e. nothing new appeared in stdout when trying any of the commands from Word). Any ideas?

Thanks,
Jeff
  • dstillman
    The scripts are hard-coded to use the system Python. Try executing them from the command line with /usr/bin/python instead.
  • jmarkow
    So it turned out that /usr/bin/python was a dead symlink to "../../System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/bin/python", a file that didn't exist. In the Frameworks directory the python executable is python2.5, so I changed /usr/bin/python to a symlink to "../../System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/bin/python2.5". Now, if I run:

    /usr/bin/python MacWord.py addCitation

    or

    python MacWord.py addCitation

    Things works perfectly. Yet, still, nothing happens when I use any of the buttons from within word.
  • dstillman
    You can try changing the .py scripts in "Word Script Menu Items/Zotero" to redirect stdout/stderr to a file rather than to /dev/null, and then try from Word.
  • jmarkow
    OK, so here's what I had to do to get everything working properly. First, I removed my MacPorts and Enthought Python framework, leaving just MacPython 2.5 (this also required ensuring that the system used MacPython as the system Python). Since /usr/bin/python was missing, I created a symlink to /usr/local/bin/python at /usr/bin/python. With this in place, I then tried:

    ./MacWord.py addCitation

    And I got a complaint about pkg_resources missing. So, I installed setuptools and its dependencies, and then installed appscript:

    sudo easy_install appscript

    Voila! Word interacted with Zotero, but it crashed every time I tried to add a citation, or do anything from the Zotero script menu. But, after updating Word 12.0 to 12.1 through autoupdate, everything worked like a charm.

    Long story short, problem solved. Thanks for the quick reply though!
  • Christoph
    Hi there,
    i´ve got the same problem, there is the zotero-menue in the apple-script folder, but nothing happens when I try to insert a citation. Unfortunatly I could not follow the discription in this thread, cause the last time I wrote something in a command line was when MS-Dos was still alive. So I´m a little bit at loss what to do.
    My System: Word 2008 for Mac 12.1.7
    Plugin 2.0a2
    Mac OS X 10.5.7
    Zotero 2.0b4
    Firefox 3.0.10
    Language: german
    Does anybody know an easy to understand solution for this problem?

    Thanks
    Christoph
  • Christoph
    If anybody does have the same problem like me, he will find a solution which worked for me in this thread:
    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/7549/word-2008-plugin-is-not-working-leaves-office-if-trying-to-add-citation/#Comment_34289
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