someone fixed a similar bug in another piece of code.... might serve as inspiration for at fix: http://archives.devshed.com/forums/mozilla-98/component-returned-failure-code-0x80004005-ns-error-failure-2292194.html

I fixed the issue by doing a reset sync from the server - thus I am unable to provide a debug id beyond what's included in the default error report referenced in the first post.

I'll try to describe the problem i was referring to regarding the ability to add citations to my document:
1. My document included a zotero reference to an article that was not included in the local replica of the zotero instance.
2. Thus, any attempt to use zotero from within my openoffice document, caused zotero to check the integrity of existing references, and failing since it could not find a corresponding reference in the local replica.
3. therefore, the synchronisation issue prevented me from inserting new references in my documents, since that would incur the deletion of parts of my existing references.

I do not know whether it would be trivial to include an option to "ignore" invalid references temporarily, but it would ensure that sync-related issues do not become showstoppers for productivity.