Can Zotero have processing problems within a large word file?

salterio
Hi there,
I am just finishing my 500 pages thesis, and since yesterday zotero does not work in this large document. If I work in other, smaller documents, or copy and paste smaller parts of it, everything is fine. If I duplicate the whole document, the problem remains the same.
Yesterday, I have even damaged my word document by zotero so that I have lost several hours of work.
Does anybody has an idea how to deal best with the problem? setting up the entire formatting of the thesis is not an option. I have to hand in next week.

Thank you!!
  • dstillman
    Can you say what the exact problem is? A refresh in a 500-page document with many citations certainly might take a long time, and we recommend working with "Automatically update citations" disabled in the plugin's document preferences and just doing a final Refresh at the end. Depending on the document and your computer/OS, it could easily take an hour or more to process. (We recommend refreshing periodically throughout the process, when you can leave your computer alone for a while, just to make sure there are no unexpected surprises when you're on a deadline.)
    Yesterday, I have even damaged my word document by zotero so that I have lost several hours of work.
    What do you mean by that?
  • salterio
    Well, the problem is that I had the automatically update citations already disabled. The process is as follows: I set a reference, go to the zotero rider, add a citation, I can choose the book, I can insert the page, but when I then press enter it takes a long time to process and in the end it fails.
    And about the damaged file: During using zotero, in one of this long processing periods that fail in the end, I have damaged the file. I can not open it any more and all attempts to restore the word document failed. I fortunately had one copy in a backup.
    thank you!
    Btw: I use word on mac, macOS Mojave 10.14.6, Word 16.43
  • adomasven
    edited December 4, 2020
    The workaround that will save you the most time and headache is to try and refresh this document with a Windows PC if you have access to one. Unfortunately Word for Mac integration is very slow and we are pretty much out of options in what we can do to improve the speed there.

    Could you produce a Debug ID from Zotero for the long failing citation insert?

    Also, if you make a copy of the document and remove something like 450 pages, can you insert/refresh fine then? Note the difference, that you shouldn't copy out 50 pages into a new doc.
  • salterio
    Ah, ok, that explains a lot....
    Well, I have no windows computer available, so I might work with shorter, separated documents. However, this will be much extrawork for the final bibliography then...
    :-(
    Would a reset of styles possibly help?
    Thank you nevertheless!
  • adomasven
    No, a reset of styles won't help. You should make sure you can refresh the bibliography on a final document though, so if you provide a Debug ID and do some troubleshooting with us we might be able to get it working for you.
  • salterio
    Ah, ok! Yes, of course, I will do a Debug ID and then let's see if things could work. Thank yyyou!!
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