Typing lag only in Documents using Zotero

peter.bigler
Hello everyone

I'm experiencing a strange typing lag in Word while using the Zotero Plugin. The Pop-up window itself works reasonably well(1-2 seconds until the search window appears), but typing has a lag from anything up to a second, making typing quite the pain.

Possible issues:
- The document I'm writing is fairly long (around 100 pages) but does at this point consist mostly of Headings (it's a draft I'm filling with content). The number of Citations is only aroudn 100 at this point.
- I'm using a Surface Pro (2018) with Word 2016 and Zotero 5.0.57, so that shouldn't be the problem. I'm regularly editing Word documents (without Zotero Citations) of 200 pages with no lag at all.
- I've deactivated Citation updates without any effect. I'm also using my own CSL style, but the style is quite simple (Inline Citations are basically "AUTHOR, Short title, page").

For Context: I originally started the document some while ago on a mac with an older version of Zotero and haven't touched it in a while before starting again on Windows/Word 2016/Zotero 5.

I worry the lag will get unbearable once the document gets to its final length (around 200 pages and probably 500 citations).

Any Ideas and help are highly appreciated, thanks!
  • dstillman
    Are you referring to typing in the document itself?

    If so, that's really just a Word issue. The plugin isn't doing anything except when you're actively using one of its functions.

    The relation to Zotero is that Zotero, like other similar tools, embeds the metadata in the field codes of the citations, and those might slow Word down.

    For long documents, your best bet is to split the document into chapters and edit those as separate documents, and then combine at the end and Refresh to update the citations and bibliography. (The people here with experience working on very large Word documents generally recommend that whether or not there are Zotero citations, though it's possible recent versions have improved in other respects.)
  • peter.bigler
    edited October 27, 2018
    Hi dstillman

    Thank you very much for the reply. Yes, typing of the document itself is lagging. I halfway suspect(ed) this to be a word issue, but it's strange that other documents (without Zotero citations in it) work flawlessly, even if they're 200+ pages.

    Could Zotero fields/Metadata slow down word even if auto-updating citations is disabled? If 100 zotero citations are enough to slow typing down that much, then splitting into chapters won't suffice for me, I'll unfortunately need a new document every few pages (law thesis).
  • dstillman
    it's strange that other documents (without Zotero citations in it) work flawlessly, even if they're 200+ pages.
    It's not, particularly. There's far more information embedded in the document when there are fields, and Word has to handle each of the fields specially.
    Could Zotero fields/Metadata slow down word even if auto-updating citations is disabled?
    Yes — the field codes are identical between the two modes, and, again, Zotero itself isn't doing anything in the background either way.
    If 100 zotero citations are enough to slow typing down that much, then splitting into chapters won't suffice for me, I'll unfortunately need a new document every few pages (law thesis).
    Many people create documents with 100+ citations, and while there've been a few reports of this over the years, it's not something we hear about regularly, so if it's really slowing down typing that much for you, there's likely something about your computer or Word configuration that's affecting this. Some of the Word experts here might be able to suggest things to try.

    Have you tried different display modes?

    What exact Word version?
  • pseudomorph
    Given the document itself was created in Word for Mac and now you're editing on Word for Windows, its possible its something to do with the document itself.

    Have you tried copying the text (citations and all) into a new document to see if that resolves the issue?
  • peter.bigler
    edited November 10, 2018
    My apologies for the late reply, I was travelling the last few days.

    I did some further testing and it seems definitely to be be a Word issue. I had tried different configurations (Surface Pro 5th gen with Win10 and up-to-date Word 2016 at work as well a 2013 MacBook Pro with High Sierra and Office 365/Word 2016 Mac at home). All had intermittend lagging without any recognizable pattern.

    Then I did test the same document in LibreOffice on Mac and had no lagging at all. However, because of potential formatting issues between LibreOffice and Word, switching is not a preferred option.

    So I checked the document itself. It's a template provided by the (future) publisher. The template was apparently created in an old Word-Version (last edited 2015 but propably much older). So I copied everything over into a new Word 2016 document and reformatted where necessary. That seems to do the job, the document runs much smoother now without any noticeable typing lag.

    Thanks a lot to both dstillman and pseudomorph for your help, much appreciated! I'll keep the document on the same machine only for now not to re-introduce any weird compatibility glitches.

    One last question: Does it matter performance-wise whether I insert two citations into one field or create two fields? E.g. if I cite a statement with a source and later add a second one, do I edit one field ("see [1;2]") or can I simply add another field (see [1];[2])
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