reporting troubleshooting in document transfer, as per instructions

sigfried
I got an error while trying to convert for transfer a document stored on onedrive (but on my Mac, not Windows) for use on google docs. The error gave me a link to https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/debugging_broken_documents. There's no mention of Word (or anything else) on MacOs on that page, but the instructions for OneDrive on Windows, item 6, worked for me.

Those instructions also say, "If this fixes the problem for you, you can help us debug this conflict by posting to the Zotero Forums," which I am dutifully doing now. All I had to do was copy the document onto my Mac (or, actually, my synced Google Drive, which Word treats as the same as the regular file system), and then the conversion went with no problem.
  • sigfried
    Oh. Less cheerful update: it didn't work importing it into google docs. The document was full of crazy citation gobbledigook, and when I tried to do Zotero Document Preferences or Convert Wordprocessor, I got an error.

    Maybe it's because I hadn't refreshed zotero in the word doc before the conversion, so I'll try it again after doing that.
  • sigfried
    Ok. That didn't help.
  • sigfried
    Alright. That took way too much messing around, but here's what I finally figured out works:

    1) Don't make a backup of the whole document because it's going to break anyway.
    2) Copy the stuff I wanted into an empty Word doc (on Mac, NOT on OneDrive)
    3) Add a zotero bibliography at the bottom because I didn't copy that part over
    4) Might have to do that again because nothing seems to happen the first time
    5) Hit Zotero Refresh just for good measure
    6) Hit Zotero Document Preferences, then Switch to a Different Word Processor, then Continue
    7) Open the docx file in GoogleDocs
    8) Hit File --> Save as Google Docs
    9) Wait for it to do whatever it's gotta do
    10) Hit Zotero Refresh, then Restore Citations
    11) Wait for it again
    12) MAJOR PROBLEM HERE ---> Don't try to edit a citation with Zotero before adding a new one (or refreshing?), because IT WILL UNLINK THAT CITATION FROM ZOTERO!! And if it says something about the citation has become unlinked but you can relink it, that just means you gotta totally insert the citation over (or five of them if there's five grouped together. Probably the superscript numbers still refer to refs in the bibliography, so maybe you can figure out what they were. But not after you refresh again. But luckily all the other ones didn't disappear.

  • sigfried
    I can confirm that if I do a refresh or other zotero option before trying to edit a citation (including the one with five items), I don't get the unlinking behavior. So I think you can use my account to help with replicating a couple problems and debugging them; and there are some items here that could also be used to improve the documentation.
  • dstillman
    I'm not able to reproduce this. I can transfer a document to Google Docs, restore citations, click Add/Edit Citation on a citation, and add a second citation to an existing one. Nothing becomes unlinked.

    What exactly are you doing to "edit" the citations?

    What citation style are you using?

    Can you provide a Debug ID from the Zotero Connector for restoring citations through the unlinking?
    8) Hit File --> Save as Google Docs
    9) Wait for it to do whatever it's gotta do
    I'm not sure what you mean by this, but note that we don't recommend going via Google Drive, if that's what you're describing. You shouldn't be using any "Save as Google Docs" option. You just use File → Open from within Google Docs and use the Upload tab.
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