Zotero crashing on Word2010 for Windows (Windows10)

Gabriellesutton
Hello,
I have a problem with Zotero crashing on a 149 pages Word document. I have read on other dicussions that the size of the document could be an issue. But I would like to check this is the actual problem as it happens just after I had to change computer. I exported my library from my old and now dead computer and imported it again in Zotero on the new computer. When I tried to check everything was ok by inserting a citation in this 149 pages document, Zotero kept crashing. The strange thing is that it had never crashed before on this same document when opened on the old computer ... that is why I'm wondering if the number of pages really is the issue.
Thank you for your help.
Gabrielle
  • bwiernik
    What exactly do you mean by “crashing”? What is happening?
  • Gabriellesutton
    After I choose a citation to insert, the Zotero green loading bar freezes and windows ends up suggesting me to close Zotero or to wait for it to respond. I have tried waiting but nothing happened.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    You can try disabling "Automatically update citations" in the plugin's Document Preferences to see if that makes a difference. You can also open Help → Debug Output Logging → View Output to see if it's actually doing anything.

    If it's actually freezing, with no output in the debug output window, see Troubleshooting Errors in Word Processor Documents for steps to isolate the problematic portion of the document (assuming this doesn't happen with a new, empty document).
    I exported my library from my old and now dead computer and imported it again in Zotero on the new computer.
    Note that you don't want to do that and will want to delete the Zotero data directory and start again on that computer. The imported items are duplicates and aren't linked to your document in any way. See Transferring a Library for how to do this.
  • Gabriellesutton
    Thank you for your instructions.
    Disabling ""Automatically update citations" in the plugin's Document preferences did stopped Zotero from crashing.
    When opening the Debug output window and trying to refresh the citations in word, I could see in the output window that something was happening but it would then stop and Zotero crashed again.
    So I had a look at the "Troubleshooting Errors in Word Processor Documents" instructions as you suggested, and tried to change the reference style in word, which seemed to solve the problem both on the original document and a copied document.
    So it looks like the problem is solved!
    The style that seems to make word crashing is Elsevier, do you think the problem comes from my data or is it a problem with the plugin? When I try to change the style back to Elsevier, the bug comes back...

    I have another question now as I read that it is better to work with multiple small documents than with one large one when using Zotero: is there a way to merge all the citations of all the small documents in the end or is it someting I can only do manually?

    Thank you for your help.
    Gabrielle

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