Zotero corrupt on multiple docs

Hi Guys,

I've been a longtime supporter of Z. I scour the forums, even hired a dev to customise the style. COntribute monthly to the donations.

That said, I am in the final stages of my PhD and things could not be more important that they work.

Now, for no reason, a document that refereshes at 1pm suddently gives errors without anything new added at 1:05pm. Citation unlink, etc.

I have sixkey documents, currently in Google Docs.
a. 5k words
b. 20k
c. 25K
d. 18K
e. 10 K
f. 5K

I work with archives, so I have hundreds of citations throughouts each doc - it's heavy,. wondering is my project just too big for Zotero and the _insert word processor_.

LHistory:
1. Started with MS Word MAC Bloatware. Lists and styles (not Z) drove me crazy. Text styles would not keep in Z citations - so switched to Libre.

2. Libre was o-k, same nightmares with styles and lists, then Zotero citatitons started unlinking and getting errors.

3. Switched to GDocs. Worked fine, until now. I actually liked the paired-down aspect of it (less bloat). Now, like I said, unlinking randomly, and just getting this blanket "Zoetro encountered errors would you like to see support documentation"

I have been all through the support docs - saved copies (worked at first, now nada), did all the workaround short of going through trying to isalated a rogue citation out of 300 in a 25K word count document.

Am working on a M1 Powerbook, 16GB ram and 2TB hd. Plenty of space and storage.

Any suggestions?

I simply cannot risk running up to the deadline and having something break last minute. I also am in overtime and do not have the luxury of messing about trying to spend hours to find broken citations that were fine ten minutes ago.

Even when it dfoes refresh, it takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r <3minutes.

Thought: is this a memory problem with Gdocs?

Is it worth trying to revert back to Libre?

At this point, I cannot even get the thing to "switch processors".


any ideas beyond the obvious is greatly appreciated.

M
  • You should switch back to Word or LibreOffice, and we can help you with any problems you encounter there. People write dissertations with the Zotero plugin in those word processors all the time, and as long as you have "Automatically update citations" off, it should be fine. Word integration is currently fairly slow on macOS, but you only need to refresh once at the end.

    The current Google Docs plugin just isn't really appropriate for a dissertation-length document, and you're very likely to hit Google Docs resource limits. We've developed a much faster version of Google Docs integration that should work better with huge documents, but it's held up by a critical bug on Google's end.

    You should make a copy of the Google Doc (File → "Make a copy"), cut it down, and use the "Switch to a Different Word Processor" option on the smaller sections, and then recombine in Word or LibreOffice.
    did all the workaround short of going through trying to isalated a rogue citation out of 300 in a 25K word count document
    While a problem with a huge Google Doc is more likely to be a general problem with resource limits from Google, so it's probably not worth debugging, the whole point of that last step is that, no matter how large your document is, it only takes about 10 iterations to find a single citation that's causing the problem.
  • @martinbphd Sorry about the trouble you're going through with your thesis. Just to add a quick note regarding citations unlinking in LibreOffice, that will happen if you copy and paste text with citations (it works fine if you cut and paste). Due to a limitation of LibreOffice there can only be one copy of a given ReferenceMark, which Zotero uses to store citations in documents. We will likely be able to improve LibreOffice citing experience relatively soon with new improvements recently made to LibreOffice, but for now, if you decide to continue working there, look out for duplicating pieces of text with Zotero citations, as they will get unlinked.
  • Thanks for this guys. I will try these solutions and get back. After a bit of wrangling, I did manage to get th edoc updated/refreshed in Chrome.

    It has occurreed that my file is something like 1GB?

    am aware of the cut/paste, thanks.

    AM also going to turn off auto refersh... will check back and let you know
  • Which file is 1GB? For the Zotero database that wouldn't be super unusual, though large. I hope your Word/LO document isn't 1GB -- I don't believe anyone has ever worked with anything remotely of that size (nor would I recommend that in general, beyond Zotero).
  • edited September 6, 2023
    Clarification: my mistake, the docs are taking up 1GB+ of RAM - I muddled the info.

    Latest:
    Was able to open in Chrome and do a "switch WP'.
    Downloaded ODT
    Did a clean install of LO.
    Reinstalled plugins from Z prefs.
    Opened downloaded doc.
    "restore citations"
    error.

    The document restores citations fine back in Chrome.

    • Going to try in Word.

    > update: restores in Word. hrmm...

    • Going to try monkeying around with LO again.

    > Downloaded exact same doc in .ODT - won't restore in LO.

    > Tried downloading as ODT and RTF again, then saving as ODT in LO. "No importable data found" on restore.

    so it looks like Word (ugh) or keep in GDDocs and use Chrome?
  • Guys & Gals: Just a note of grattitude for fixing this in the update. (Safari fix). I think that's that one anywat.

    truly great project here.
Sign In or Register to comment.