Adding Citation Leads to Word Crash

Hi,
Report ID: 586290042
Today my Word crashed when I clicked "add citation" in the Word AddIn - I work with Zotero frequently and so far never had this issue.
I copied my text to a new document where it worked fine for about 2 hours, and then the crashes started in the same manner. As of now, I have 4 different documents that all crash as soon as i click "add citation". At first I thought I could link it to a specific citation but this does not seem to be the case. Deactivating automatic synch did not help, and I currently work on a storage without auto saving feature.

I then reinstalled Zotero (deleted the folder at C:\Users\\Zotero manually as the uninstall did not do that and then set up the synch anew) but that didn't do the trick either.

Now I'm at a loss. Any ideas what is causing this?
  • edited December 21, 2020
    Is Word crashing or is it freezing? As in, does it close completely? If so, do you get some sort of error message or crash report from the system?

    What exact, full version of Word?

    Can you reproduce this in a new, empty document?
  • Word closes completely, I then receive an error from zotero.exe: "Zotero experienced an error updating your document. Would you like to view troubleshooting instructions"

    Word version 2011 Build 13426.20332

    Yes I can reproduce it. I created a completely new document and after ~2 hours ran into the same error again. I then opened another empy word document and added some citations (ones I have previously used without problems) and at some point i received the error described above.
  • The error from Zotero isn't relevant — you're just getting that because Word disappeared.

    The relevant thing would be the Word crash, and ideally you'd be able to get a crash report from Windows for that, though I'm not sure offhand where to look for that. @adomasven might have some suggestions.

    How much RAM do you have in this computer?
  • It causes an entry in windows event viewer. Do you mean something like that?
    wwlib.dll is listed as "faulty module" (my OS language isn't English, might be a bad translation), and WINWORD.exe is listed as "faulty application". Event ID 1000, "Application Error".

    The PC is equipped with 16GB RAM.

    If that's in any way helpful: It seems to be an issue that came with the current version of Zotero. Haven't used it in a few days and i'm fairly certain it updated when I opened it today.
  • Can you reinstall Zotero 5.0.93 and see if the problem still occurs?

    https://www.zotero.org/download/client/dl?channel=release&platform=win32&version=5.0.93

    (Note that Zotero may try to upgrade itself if you restart it, so after installing 5.0.93, you should test this before restarting Zotero.)
  • Word crashed the second I clicked "add citation". Shame, that just makes things more difficult.
    Same message upon crashing, the ID is 818749560.

    Is there any chance this is caused by my current word installation? (vague question I know - just figuring there might be some experience with these kinds of problems) I could certainly reinstall office to debug, but as that would lead to quite a bit of configuration afterwards, I will only attempt it if there's a chance that this resolves the issue.
  • OK, 5.0.93 has been out since November 4 and didn't contain any Word changes on Windows, so this was almost certainly some other change on your system.

    Can you think of any changes since Zotero was last working?

    If you have any other Word plugins, obviously try temporarily removing those.

    If you're running any third-party security software, that could also be involved.

    Beyond that, I'm afraid I don't have a lot to suggest beyond a Word reinstall. One easier thing to maybe try first is switching to one of the Insider/beta builds of Word, in case there's some bug that's already been fixed.
  • edited December 22, 2020
    I just uninstalled the updates that were installed (automatically through windows updates) since Zotero last worked. I have not made any changes personally. I worked with Zotero last friday, so there can only have been so many changes.

    No other word plugins are installed.
    Disabling Firewall and/or my anti-virus software does not have an effect either.

    I have now reinstalled office - and repeated the steps described above - the error persists.

    This is worrisome, whether Zotero is causing this or not; I am unable to do anything about it. A spontaneous OS reinstall does not exactly sound like an option but it will probably get down to this. Since the cause is unknow this isn't a promising choice, because who knows if the error will just pop back up.
    Additionally, zotero does work for a while when I open a new word document. Somewhere along the way, something just seems to go awry.

    Thank you for your help so far, if you have any more ideas I'm wide open.
  • Probably not much we can do with it on our end, but if there's any additional info in Event Viewer, copy it all and send it to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread.
  • Follow up on this;
    I intended to reinstall my OS and thus started working on another client for the time being - and now I'm experiencing the same issues there, which makes me wonder whether one of the sources in my Zotero library could be problematic? (For the sake of completeness, the Debug Output is below)

    Are there steps that I could take to identify a potentially faulty source (and remove whatever causes the issue)?


    ____
    [JavaScript Error: "Error: Could not remove C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP\Zotero.dotm" {file: "resource://zotero-winword-integration/installer.jsm" line: 181}]

    [JavaScript Error: "The connection to wss://stream.zotero.org/ has terminated unexpectedly. Some data may have been transferred."]

    [JavaScript Error: "WebSocket connection closed: 1006 "]

    [JavaScript Error: "The connection was refused when attempting to contact wss://stream.zotero.org/."]

    [JavaScript Error: "WebSocket connection closed: 1006 "]

    [JavaScript Error: "Der RPC-Server ist nicht verfügbar.

    [cleanup:\vboxsvr\adomas\zotero\word-for-windows-integration\build\zoterowinwordintegration\document.cpp]"]

    [JavaScript Error: "Der Remoteprozeduraufruf ist fehlgeschlagen.

    [setText:\vboxsvr\adomas\zotero\word-for-windows-integration\build\zoterowinwordintegration\field.cpp]"]

    [JavaScript Error: "Der RPC-Server ist nicht verfügbar.

    [cleanup:\vboxsvr\adomas\zotero\word-for-windows-integration\build\zoterowinwordintegration\document.cpp]"]

    [JavaScript Error: "Der Remoteprozeduraufruf ist fehlgeschlagen.

    [insertFieldRaw:\vboxsvr\adomas\zotero\word-for-windows-integration\build\zoterowinwordintegration\document.cpp]"]

    [JavaScript Error: "Der RPC-Server ist nicht verfügbar.

    [cleanup:\vboxsvr\adomas\zotero\word-for-windows-integration\build\zoterowinwordintegration\document.cpp]"]

    [JavaScript Error: "Der Remoteprozeduraufruf ist fehlgeschlagen.

    [insertFieldRaw:\vboxsvr\adomas\zotero\word-for-windows-integration\build\zoterowinwordintegration\document.cpp]"]

    version => 5.0.95.1, platform => Win32, oscpu => Windows NT 10.0; WOW64, locale => de, appName => Zotero, appVersion => 5.0.95.1, extensions => Zotero LibreOffice Integration (5.0.25.SA.5.0.95.1, extension), Zotero Word for Windows Integration (5.0.19.SA.5.0.95.1, extension)
  • Inserting a specific citation could potentially be the cause of this, although the probability of that is very unlikely. Just certain items being in Zotero couldn't cause this sort of crashing. Does this computer have the same version of Word on it? Did it work well for a while before you started getting crashed? Can you reproduce this in a new document too? Could you try switching your computer language to English temporarily and see whether you can reproduce the crashing?
  • edited February 5, 2021
    I installed the Windows 10 language packet and was able to reproduce the error. Though admittedly, that install was rather incomplete; based on the amount of guides on how to complete it that is rather typical though. Should I install the word language packet as well, or were you specifically interested in the impact of the system language change?

    As for the other questions:

    Does this computer have the same version of Word on it? - yes, the Word versions seem to be identical, Version 2101 (Build 13628.20274)

    Did it work well for a while before you started getting crashed? - yes it did, but the error eventually occurs on new documents as well. Sometimes I can add 10+ citations over the course of 3 hours without issues, and other times i have an immediate crash. (I also tried disabeling my anti virus, which does not

    Can you reproduce this in a new document too? - as mentioned above, yes I can. I kept a document open (several times) just occassionally typing some text and adding a citation, and after a few hours it crashed. (I save regularly, the file was saved locally, not synched to One Drive)
  • Your version of Windows didn't come with English language preinstalled? It's unlikely to help, but switching both Windows and Word to English (US) temporarily for testing is worth trying.
  • edited February 28, 2021
    Hi, sorry for the late answer. I have now completely reinstalled one of my devices, everything is in English. I will post again once I sufficiently worked with Zotero.
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