Zotero wont create bibliography - Mac

nmpetrie

I am using Zotero for my thesis and can't create a bibliography.

I am on word (says it is version 16.16.21) using the Zotero plugin.

The document has been created by copying and pasting different chapters into one document. The chapters are split by Sections, and so the footnote numbering starts afresh in each chapter.

I just can't create a bibliography. Sometimes noting comes up. Other times I get "{Citation}" but nothing more.

I have gone through the troubleshooting tips but this hasn't helped.

I can still create new footnotes in my thesis document.

Does anyone have ideas/tips?



  • adomasven
    Can you generate bibliographies in each individual chapter documents? If the document is very long you might need to wait quite a while for the bibliography to be generated. How long is the document? If you've waited a long time could you produce a Debug ID from Zotero?

    1. In the Help menu, go to Debug Output Logging and select Enable.
    2. Attempt to insert a bibliography in the document. Wait for either an error message to come up or at least 10 minutes.
    3. Return to Zotero Help → Debug Output Logging and click Submit Output, which will disable logging and submit the output to zotero.org. A window should pop up containing a Debug ID. Click “Copy to Clipboard” and paste the Debug ID into this forum thread.
  • nmpetrie

    Thanks for the comment

    1. I have tried making bibliographies on other chapters. Appears to work on some chapters but not others.
    2. The document is very long. But how do I know if a bibliography is being created or nothing is happening? After I press the button to create a bibliography - nothing is coming up (no spinning wheel etc).
    3. The Debug code that comes up is: D1393158170

  • nmpetrie
    The other thing that sometimes happens after I click to create a bibliography is that it toggles to the main zotero screen, and nothing happens in the word document
  • adomasven
    edited May 4, 2020
    You have a huge document with over 1091 cited items. It will take a long time to insert the bibliography. It is likely it will take over one hour to do it. If you see the main Zotero window pop up, Zotero is likely trying to display and focus the progress bar, but failing for some reason. If you look through all Zotero open windows you will find one which has a progress bar. It will not indicate to you precise progress, but as long as it is displaying and is animated Zotero is working on your document.
  • nmpetrie
    I dont know if I am missing something, but after I press the bibliogrpahy button, I don't see any 'zotero windows' open other than the main zotero window.

    Also, what do you mean by 'displaying and animated'?
  • nmpetrie
    Happy to wait for it to generate but don't want to wait for hours if it is not actually generating anything
  • nmpetrie
    OK it has now generated a bibliography. Thanks!
  • AlvaroDiezValle
    @adomasven hi writing four years after, same problem. The program doesn't react when I try to add Bibliography, also a very long document. I activvated teh debug, maybe I just need to wait? I could do it in pieces but I am supposed to put all the literature in the end so many articles would repeat. Any suggestion?
  • AlvaroDiezValle
    D103036598 Debug code
    [JavaScript Error: "d.current is undefined" {file: "resource://zotero/note-editor/editor.js" line: 6}]
    appears among the many lines in the report
  • adomasven
    The Debug Log shows you successfully running Refresh in your document. It takes 250s (4min 10s) to load all citations in your document, a total of nearly 1000, and the full document refresh takes 600s (10min). After that a Document Preferences command begins to run and is pending the document field loading again (another 250s). The refresh speed on Google Docs mainly depends on the number of pages in the document, not the number of citations, but I imagine this is a document with a few hundred pages, so the speed is in-line for Google Docs.

    We recommend disabling automatic citation updates in Document Preferences on documents of such size, and generally on documents of size we recommend using Word or LibreOffice where updates should be faster (although Word for Mac has its own slowness problems) and there's generally a much smaller likelihood of potential citation corruption due to software bugs, and even when those occur, they are easier to troubleshoot.
  • AlvaroDiezValle
    @adomasven thanks for answering. It was actually a Word file, not a Google Docs. But it was on Mac and it was 480 pages, yes! It managed to upload part of the bibliograph, but not all. Like, I used different macros, to upload the bibliography in different segments (websites, scientific literature, etc.). In some cases it couldn't do it. In the end I did with my old Windows computer, for the parts of the bibliography that didn't work, maybe I'll be luckier next time.
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