Zotero is very slow in adding or editing citations

tomcho · February 19, 2019

It is taking Zotero over a minute to add or edit a citation. I'm using the Word plugin. My report ID is 1239996488.

adomasven · February 19, 2019

How big is your document and how many citations do you have?

tomcho · February 19, 2019

Thanks for the fast response. My document is 332 double-spaced pages or almost 90,000 words (it's in the process of being shortened) and 832 KB. I don't know how to tell how many citations I have.

adomasven · February 20, 2019

Assuming you have a reasonable number of citations for a document of this size (i.e. over 200), the Word plugin will inevitably be slow. This is an issue with Mac Word. Your best bet is to disable automatic citation updates in the document preferences and if that doesn't help, insert citations in a different document and paste them into this one, then refresh in the end.

tomcho · February 20, 2019

Thanks. I probably do have over 200 citations. I had already disabled automatic citation updates and I don't think it made much or any difference. I will try inserting citations in a separate document and pasting them in. I didn't think of that. Thanks.

PS So I gather that because this is an issue with Mac Word, you don't have any sense of whether or how soon it might ever be addressed?

adomasven · February 20, 2019

We will fix this eventually, but it's not going to happen in the near future.

tomcho · February 20, 2019

OK. Thanks for letting me know.

djross3 · February 22, 2019

Same as here: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/75544/word-2016-mac-plugin-very-slow
Yes, the solution is to work in another document (even open at the same time!) and copy/paste between them. It's slightly awkward at first but then a very fast workflow, and solves all of the speed issues, except when you must finally update the main document at the end, but you can do that overnight.