[URGENT] Error inserting citation into existing footnote after update

edited March 20, 2022
Report ID: 696456032

I updated Zotero.

Now when I try to insert a citation into a footnote in an existing document, it says 'Zotero experienced an error updating your document. Would you like to view troubleshooting instructions?'. It does not matter whether the footnote already contains a citation or not. The document does not contain a bibliography.

The same message appears if I try to switch to a different bibliography style (in the existing document). It also happens if I copy the content of the document into a new one and try to add a citation to a footnote there.

It does not happen in a new document. It also does not seem to happen if I delete all footnotes except for the very first one in the existing document - then I can also change bibliography style.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open a document that I've been working on for weeks without experiencing problems.
2. Put the cursor at the end of an existing footnote.
3. Click Add/Edit citation.
4. Choose the reference I'd like to insert.
5. Click enter.
6. Error message appears.

I should add that this is extremely urgent (my final deadline for submitting my PhD dissertation is in a few days and I've relied on Zotero extensively in the past 4 years working on it). I hope I'm describing the issue accurately. Thanks in advance for any help.
  • Checking other discussion in the forum, it seems to be the same problem experienced on Mac by SergioPiresBras, johnll and drewlongacre.

    SergioPiresBras sent an excerpt and the error could be reproduced. He received a reply saying that the error would be fixed. I can send an excerpt if needed.

    If fixing the error is likely to take more than a few hours, could you please suggest a way to downgrade to the previous version? Would that cause any problem with the online syncing of the database? My life is going to turn into a nightmare in the next days if I can't use Zotero properly, so I'm begging you. Thank you very much in advance.
  • Not sure when they'll fix it, but temporary downgrade instructions e.g. here https://twitter.com/adam42smith/status/1504824167774015490?t=qlnrn1qOuzdzken9lKuWIA&s=19 (read through the end)
  • edited March 20, 2022
    Thank you!
  • Done it. At first there were problems with the Word Add-on, it showed an error message whatever I tried to do, so I deleted Zotero.dotm from the Word Startup folder and replaced it with the copy that's in /Applications/Zotero.app/Contents/Resources/extensions/zoteroMacWordIntegration@zotero.org/install. Seems to work now. (Might be worth adding to the Twitter post that this could happen, I almost had a heart attack!) Thanks a lot @adamsmith
  • Hi folks

    Experiencing the same error, Mac OS 11.5.1, latest version of Word.

    Proper to that I got an error message saying that Zotero required 11.4
  • @Genial92, @gavinf: This should be fixed now in Zotero 6.0.1.
  • Yes working thank you
This discussion has been closed.