Zotero integration on Mac OS: long lag when adding a reference (report #161980752)

perseus777
edited September 20, 2023
I keep facing some serious issues with Zotero on Word Mac Os (build 13.5.2 (22G91), Macbook Air M1).
Here is the description of what happens:
1. I open my PhD thesis (200'000 words, around 500 references) in .docx.
2. I go to the Zotero tab and click "add/edit citation".
3. The reference panel opens and I select a reference.
4. When I click RETURN, that panel freezes and takes up to 4-5 minutes to add my reference in the text.
-> no error message, and no error in the report journal. I should say also that I have updated Zotero (6.0.27) and tried to remove and reinstall Zotero!

Would be grateful to get some help on this !
  • adomasven
    The citation dialog should not freeze, but with a document of that size it is going to take a while to add citations unless you disable automatic citation updates in the Document Preferences (in Word Zotero tab). The first addition after restarting Zotero will still take a while, but subsequent edits should be much faster.
  • perseus777
    Thank you, I will try it. However I have faced a new issue with Zotero, it looks quite unstable. I have a new error report #1641209235. Could you please help with that?
  • DWL-SDCA
    Please explain further what makes you think that "it looks quite unstable" and be specific. Simply providing a report number will seldom provide sufficient context for understanding the issue.

    https://www.zotero.org/support/reporting_problems
  • perseus777
    Ok. I have opened Word and Zotero then tried to add a citation and this resulted in the error report and crash of Zotero.
    Then, I have tried the solution proposed and unclicked the "auto refresh" button in the settings, but my last attempt of adding a citation in the text took more than 12 min to resolve. Isn't this exaggerated?
    This is why I made the comment "it looks quite unstable".
  • adomasven
    As explained above, the first addition after restarting Zotero will take a while, but subsequent ones should be much faster. Unfortunately the performance of Word for Mac integration with Zotero is not as fast as we would like, but there is little we can do to improve it, especially with very big documents.

    As for Zotero crashing, if you continue to experience that, you should report it separately.
  • perseus777
    Thank you, but just to confirm that the consecutive edits/add citations are not much faster. May I ask why this is so time consuming? I cannot compute why modern CPUs would not be able to handle adding/editing a citation in large texts with numerous citations? It works perfectly on PC. Is there an explanation?
  • adomasven
    Could you produce a Debug ID from Zotero for a non-first edit of a document with Zotero?

    Unfortunately the API Zotero uses to interface with Word is very slow due to a variety of technical and historical reasons. We're working with Microsoft to produce a plugin with a new API that will be much faster.
  • perseus777
    Thank you, the latest version is really efficient! Good job to the developers.
  • adomasven
    We have not changed anything about the Word integration in the last few versions, so whatever improvement you are seeing is caused by something else.
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