Unable to add/Very slow add of citations
I have had this issue increasingly lately. It takes nearly 3 minutes to add a citation and if I try to work on the document while the Quick Format Citation bar slowly works, it comes back with an error. I have 1095 footnotes so far and more will need to be added. It's so frustrating I'm nearly at the point of unlinking citations and doing the rest manually which is just an unimaginably huge task with this thesis. Is it normal for zotero to get so slow at a certain point? What can I do to fix it?
This is the error report file for the most recent one:
[JavaScript Error: "The operation couldn't be completed. (OSStatus error -1708.) @[setTextRaw:field.m:436]" {file: "file:///Applications/Zotero.app/Contents/Resources/extensions/zoteroMacWordIntegration@zotero.org/components/zoteroMacWordIntegration.js" line: 227}]
version => 5.0.85, platform => MacIntel, oscpu => Intel Mac OS X 10.14, locale => en-GB, appName => Zotero, appVersion => 5.0.85, extensions => ODF Scan for Zotero (2.0.43, extension), ZotFile (5.0.16, extension), Better BibTex for Zotero (5.2.20, extension), Zotero Word for Mac Integration (5.0.26.SA.5.0.85, extension), Zotero LibreOffice Integration (5.0.22.SA.5.0.85, extension)
This is the error report file for the most recent one:
[JavaScript Error: "The operation couldn't be completed. (OSStatus error -1708.) @[setTextRaw:field.m:436]" {file: "file:///Applications/Zotero.app/Contents/Resources/extensions/zoteroMacWordIntegration@zotero.org/components/zoteroMacWordIntegration.js" line: 227}]
version => 5.0.85, platform => MacIntel, oscpu => Intel Mac OS X 10.14, locale => en-GB, appName => Zotero, appVersion => 5.0.85, extensions => ODF Scan for Zotero (2.0.43, extension), ZotFile (5.0.16, extension), Better BibTex for Zotero (5.2.20, extension), Zotero Word for Mac Integration (5.0.26.SA.5.0.85, extension), Zotero LibreOffice Integration (5.0.22.SA.5.0.85, extension)
https://www.zotero.org/blog/zotero-5-0-36/#faster-citing-in-large-documents
Most recent error log:
[JavaScript Error: "The operation couldn't be completed. (OSStatus error -1708.) @[setTextRaw:field.m:436]" {file: "file:///Applications/Zotero.app/Contents/Resources/extensions/zoteroMacWordIntegration@zotero.org/components/zoteroMacWordIntegration.js" line: 227}]
[JavaScript Error: "The operation couldn't be completed. (OSStatus error -1728.) @[cleanup:document.m:1096]" {file: "file:///Applications/Zotero.app/Contents/Resources/extensions/zoteroMacWordIntegration@zotero.org/components/zoteroMacWordIntegration.js" line: 227}]
[JavaScript Error: "The operation couldn't be completed. (OSStatus error -1708.) @[selectField:field.m:341]" {file: "file:///Applications/Zotero.app/Contents/Resources/extensions/zoteroMacWordIntegration@zotero.org/components/zoteroMacWordIntegration.js" line: 227}]
version => 5.0.85, platform => MacIntel, oscpu => Intel Mac OS X 10.14, locale => en-GB, appName => Zotero, appVersion => 5.0.85, extensions => ODF Scan for Zotero (2.0.43, extension), ZotFile (5.0.16, extension), Better BibTex for Zotero (5.2.20, extension), Zotero Word for Mac Integration (5.0.26.SA.5.0.85, extension), Zotero LibreOffice Integration (5.0.22.SA.5.0.85, extension)
After you've disabled that, when you refresh manually, you shouldn't do anything in the document before it completes.
If you get an error at that point, restart Zotero and try again. If you're still getting errors refreshing, see Debugging Broken Documents.
I have tried all the things on that debugging broken documents other than isolating the problematic citations. I don't have time for that. I have to submit this thesis soon. Also I think it is just the sheer volume that is problematic rather than a problematic citation. there should have been a warning that zotero does not work for large documents so if you're writing a PhD use something else.
What citation style are you using?
If you're actually getting an error, you should follow the debugging steps. The whole point of the process is that, if there's a problematic citation, you should be able to isolate it in a few minutes, no matter how long your document is.
If it's just slow or unresponsive, we'd want to see a Debug ID for an example operation. You should restart Zotero first, if you haven't yet.
my word is 16.35 Word for Mac.
The Debug ID I submitted is: D571636420
Re: the refresh, the point is that, while it can take a long time, with "Automatically update citations" disabled you should only need to do that at the very end, before you submit it (with a one or two test runs before then, when you can leave Word alone for a while, to make sure there won't be any problems closer to your deadline). And, as you can see from the output, it's not that it wasn't doing anything — it just can take a while.
The bigger problem would be if inserts are still slow, since you need to do that throughout. @adomasven will need to look at the log to evaluate the insert performance. It looks like retrieving existing fields from the document did take ~80 seconds, which is far from ideal. But after that there are a huge number of logged lines from Better BibTeX, so you should try with that disabled to see if it makes a difference.
If above is not an option that your best bet is to keep citing with automatic citation updates turned off and refresh the document when finalizing given how time costly it is.