Why is Zotero SOOOO SLOOOOOWWWWW?

elizabethdulemba
I'm writing my dissertation - it's 300 pages with citations throughout. Since I wrote it in Scrivener (which doesn't support Zotero), and have to pull it into Word, I'm having to rebuild ALL of my citations. Every single citation is taking a full two to three minutes to build, while I stare at the progress bar. Is this normal? (On a Mac using Word.)
  • dstillman
    https://www.zotero.org/blog/zotero-5-0-36/#faster-citing-in-large-documents
  • djross3
    See also this discussion:
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/74757/extremesly-slow-response-from-the-edit-citation-feature-of-the-word-plugin-for-mac

    There are some workarounds that will save you time. (Also, you might consider using Windows for the slowest parts, if that happens to be an option for you. It really is much faster than Mac, due to how Word allows plugins to work differently on the two systems.)
  • adomasven
    Updating Word for Mac to the latest version might improve the speed too
  • emilianoeheyns
    I don't know how far along you are, but this sounds like a great job for the odt scanner.
  • elizabethdulemba
    Hi - I tried your first suggestion - turning off the "auto updating citations" and it's a little faster, but not by a whole lot. And if I pull text out of my primary document to add citations in a different document, doesn't that rather defeat the point? I'm trying to build my bibliography (rebuild my bibliography, since the citations didn't translate between Scrivener and Word). I have the most up-to-date version of Word. I don't have access to a Windows machine, so that option isn't available. If I better understood how Zotero functions on a philosophical level, that might help, but I don't have time to become a Zotero expert - I need to get my dissertation done. Honestly, the whole thing has me really frustrated, but I'm too far along to switch programs.
  • dstillman
    I tried your first suggestion - turning off the "auto updating citations" and it's a little faster, but not by a whole lot.
    How long is it taking to insert a citation now?

    Can you provide a Debug ID for an insert operation?

    What exact version of Word are you running?
  • elizabethdulemba
    The difference was nominal, so I turned auto-updating back on. It was also making me very nervous that it wasn't going to update my bibliography properly. i.e. when I had it on, I hit 'refresh' and left it to run overnight so that it could have all the time/memory it needed. But of course, the second it gets to a modification, the whole thing stops running to ask me which version I want, so it didn't really do any good. I would have to sit with it while it's refreshing the entire document, and yet there's no way for me to know if it's running, where it is in the process, or how much longer it will take. And even after refreshing, some of the citations still had the dotted line underneath, so I couldn't be sure if they had actually updated. Sometimes the functions take so long (and are working behind the scenes), I move on thinking it's done, and the whole document will suddenly jump to another section of my document and put something in the wrong place, or overwrite another citation, or, or... I'm on Word 16.37 through my university. I don't know if it's me (probably somewhat) or the program, but it is just so darned buggy, I really wish I had started with a different program. Zotero is fine for small papers (like under 5,000 words), but it has been a nightmare to use this program with a document like mine (over 300 pages). I'll look at the Debug ID thing... although if it looks too time consuming, I may not be able to go there. I just need a program that works, so that I can just get to work. e
  • dstillman
    The difference was nominal, so I turned auto-updating back on.
    There should be a significant difference. We strongly recommend leaving it off when working on a large document. You should test refreshing periodically to avoid surprises close to your deadline, but there's no need to do so regularly — unless you're using uncited items, the bibliography just reflects the current citations in the document, and it's regenerated fresh each time, so you're not actually accomplishing anything by refreshing it ahead of time. It's a waste of time.
    But of course, the second it gets to a modification, the whole thing stops running to ask me which version I want, so it didn't really do any good.
    You shouldn't make manual edits to citations. If you're doing that, you're absolutely going to run into problems, including prompts in the middle of refreshing and persistent underlines on modified citations (though the latter is a bug). To fix citations that are incorrect, update the metadata in Zotero or customize the citations via the citation dialog. If you really need to make an edit manually, we recommend doing so in a copy of the document after unlinking citations, immediately before submitting. But that should rarely be necessary. If there's a kind of edit you think is necessary, start a new thread here and give an example, and we can tell you if there's a better way.

    Plenty of people use Zotero with very large documents, but Word for Mac is just very slow at updating fields, so there's a particular way to work with it.

    For the actual update speed, we can't tell you more without a Debug ID.
  • djross3
    And if I pull text out of my primary document to add citations in a different document, doesn't that rather defeat the point?
    No, not at all. I do this every day. Simply write in another window, then copy that section back into your main document. You don't need to save two documents (unless you want to save your temporary document just in case while working). It will be much faster to edit in a second document, and then you can copy and paste it back into the main one and not wait for Zotero to actually process anything in that document, but it will work.
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