Freezes and crashes when I try to add a citation to word

When I try to add a citation to a document it freezes and crashes. Or it says that it cannot connect with the word plugin or Zotero and that I should check troubleshooting. I have gone through several steps to fix this such as restarting both word and Zotero, I have uninstalled Zotero and reinstalled it along with the word plug-in manually. I deleted the extension.ion or something like that. I don't know how to check if there are duplicate Zoteros somewhere on my computer, which I saw some posts refer to. I've been working on this document for about a year and it has many citations from Zotero in it. When I open a blank page Zotero works. However, when I copy and paste all my work to a fresh document it still freezes.
  • What OS and exact, full Word version?

    Can you provide a Report ID from Zotero?

    If a new document works but an existing one doesn't, see Troubleshooting Errors in Word Processor Documents.
  • I can't provide a report ID because it always crashes, unfortunately. I tried all the solutions on the troubleshooting link you sent. It works when I change the bibliography style, but not when I change it back to the one I need. Also, I got it to work by creating a copy and unlinking all the citations. This is not ideal, since I still need to work from the document, but I think that means there is probably a problematic citation. Do you know how I can find which one it is? I probably have hundreds of citations, so checking one by one is not ideal.
  • We need a Report ID — even if it's from before the crash — and the information I ask for above to start.

    The last step on the linked page explains how to quickly cut down the document to identify the problem. Unless it still happens if you delete the full contents of the copied document, that step is relevant.

    You don't need to unlink your document.
  • edited January 8, 2021
    1181870804 = report ID

    I'm using word on Microsoft 10. Not sure what you mean by exact.

    Thanks, I will try the trial and error method described.
  • The splitting in half trial and error method worked when I deleted some sections, but then eventually stopped working. I think there may be multiple problematic citations making it more complicated. Is there a better way to identify a broken citation or characteristics of problematic citations that might make identifying them easier?

    Thanks.
  • That's the way to do it — you can reduce a thousand citations to a single citation in 10 steps.
  • Sounds good. I think that would be a great solution if there were only a single problematic citation, however, it's not working for me, sadly. Perhaps I have a couple in there making them hard to identify. Also, it does take some time to force close and reopen Zotero every time it crashes making it a bit cumbersome.

    For future reference, if anyone else has this problem, I just unlinked the citations and then I was able to add more without a problem. I will just manually combine my bibliography at the end. Not a perfect solution, but works when you don't have time to do trial and error when it keeps crashing.

    Thanks anyway! I appreciate the suggestions!
  • edited January 8, 2021
    To be clear, it's not a question of how many citations might be broken. The point is to isolate a single part of the document that's broken so that you can send us the excerpt, as explained at the bottom of the page, for us to try to fix the underlying problem.
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