2. Work in a separate window for part of your document. Just copy/paste your paragraph/section/etc., and you'll find it's MUCH faster in a new window, even open simultaneously with your full document. This is how I work on my hundreds-of-pages, thousands-of-citations dissertation, just one section at a time in a temporary window, then copying back to the main document. (Hint: create a duplicate template version of your main document and then delete the content in the copy, so when copying back and forth you preserve your formatting.)
3. Use Windows for the slowest parts. Word for Windows allows faster macro integration for Zotero so especially when refreshing the full bibliography, if you are able, you should try to use Windows instead. Personally I do this for my dissertation, using a 10-year-old nothing-special Windows desktop, and compared to my current top of the line Macbook, that old computer is exponentially faster. So if you happen to have a Windows computer around and can use it once in a while, this will make everything much faster. In my case, it was taking 2 hours or more to refresh the bibliography on my Mac but then on the PC it was under 5 minutes. Now it's up to 15 minutes on the PC, and I haven't even tried to refresh on the Mac for a while. Whenever I want to generate a full version, I just copy the file over there, refresh it, then move it back to my Mac. (Note: make sure you sync Zotero between the two computers before you refresh!)
Note that all of this seems to be exponentially slower as the document grows, because it's comparing and combining all of the citations at once.
And for the record, although this can cause a little frustration while working, now that I've gotten used to it, all of the workarounds listed above are actually overall generally convenient and don't interrupt my workflow.
Upgrade Storage
https://www.zotero.org/blog/zotero-5-0-36/#faster-citing-in-large-documents
Then just refresh at the end (which might take a while).
2. Work in a separate window for part of your document. Just copy/paste your paragraph/section/etc., and you'll find it's MUCH faster in a new window, even open simultaneously with your full document. This is how I work on my hundreds-of-pages, thousands-of-citations dissertation, just one section at a time in a temporary window, then copying back to the main document. (Hint: create a duplicate template version of your main document and then delete the content in the copy, so when copying back and forth you preserve your formatting.)
3. Use Windows for the slowest parts. Word for Windows allows faster macro integration for Zotero so especially when refreshing the full bibliography, if you are able, you should try to use Windows instead. Personally I do this for my dissertation, using a 10-year-old nothing-special Windows desktop, and compared to my current top of the line Macbook, that old computer is exponentially faster. So if you happen to have a Windows computer around and can use it once in a while, this will make everything much faster. In my case, it was taking 2 hours or more to refresh the bibliography on my Mac but then on the PC it was under 5 minutes. Now it's up to 15 minutes on the PC, and I haven't even tried to refresh on the Mac for a while. Whenever I want to generate a full version, I just copy the file over there, refresh it, then move it back to my Mac. (Note: make sure you sync Zotero between the two computers before you refresh!)
Note that all of this seems to be exponentially slower as the document grows, because it's comparing and combining all of the citations at once.
And for the record, although this can cause a little frustration while working, now that I've gotten used to it, all of the workarounds listed above are actually overall generally convenient and don't interrupt my workflow.