Zotero slow on Google Docs

I am using Zotero on Google Docs and it is particularly slow in inserting citations.

Is it normal or it's only me?
  • The Google Docs integration will slow down with the size of the document. Beyond 50 pages is where it becomes quite difficult even for the Google Docs editor itself and Zotero is limited by the speed of the platform it's on. It might be a good idea to switch to a different word processor if your document is getting big not only for Zotero speed improvements.
  • My document is 37 pages including Zotero references
  • That is quite a lot and slowdown is expected. We have done everything we can to make the integration as fast as possible. You can disable automatic citation update from Zotero document preferences if you haven't already, otherwise a switch to a different word processor will provide the most obvious improvement.
  • No I hadn't disabled automatic citation update. I did but it is still quite slow. The improvement is marginal.
  • I am also having slowness issues. Fastest to insert a citation tends to be a 5 second wait opening the edit citation bar (red bar), then 10-20 seconds after I close it to update document. Sometimes much longer, 30-60s. I captured one which is medium slow

    desktop D713022395
    chrome extension D1467434597

    Hope that helps...
  • @jonathanstray It seems that this was an insertion after restarting Zotero, which will always be slightly slower than every insertion after that. If you still find it too slow you can disable automatic citation updates from Zotero document preferences. What you're seeing is not out of the ordinary for a medium sized document and is a limitation of Google Docs that we unfortunately cannot work around to improve.
  • edited October 8, 2021
    @adomasven Thanks. I'll definitely check out the auto citation update. I'm still seeing occasional hangs though -- sometimes it goes to "updating document" on the doc and never comes back, meanwhile the red bar remains up on the desktop app. I haven't managed to catch it doing this in debug mode. If I leave debug on for days will generate any useful data if I do catch it?
  • Unless you can find a way to consistently freeze it, a Debug ID alone won't help.
  • Turning off the auto citation updates led to an enormous speed improvement. Thanks!
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