Word cursor flashing manically, errors when trying to update citations

sicahjes
I have been experiencing an issue with Word again., where the cursor is rapidly flashing between an arrow and text select, which is quite distracting.

It was also throwing up a lot of errors when I added a new citation, so I went through the troubleshooting.

I've had tracked changes on in the document (which is essential) but have turned it off to troubleshoot. After doing the below steps, I thought I was able to isolate the issue as related to the field codes displaying instead of formatted citations. However, I just opened a version of the file that has field codes displayed and the flashing is occurring... so I'm at a complete loss.

Debug ID: D1716145979
Troubleshooting, I have:

- Changed from Beta to stable
- Turned off automatic citation updates
- Restarted Word, Zotero, and my machine.
- Turned off tracked changes
- Made sure “Typing replaces selected text” was checked.
- Copied all contents into a new document, issue persists.
- Duplicated file, issue persists.
- Changed from Chicago 17 (Note) to app 7, issue persists.
- tried changing back from APA 7 to Chicago, returned "Zotero experienced an error updating your document" error
- Deleted the bibliography
- Pressed Alt/Option-F9 and Alt/Option-Fn-F9 to display field codes, it did not work.
- Isolate the problem, this is inconsistent. In one copy of the file I managed to reduce the citations down and it stopped once I was left with three citations, but when I tried again in a new file to confirm I could not duplicate the 'fix'.

I would be most grateful for a resolution, I can't leave the field codes on, there's so much gibberish.
  • adomasven
    Could you take a screen recording of the issue that you are seeing?

    For the record, you should never work with field code display enabled. We have various instructions around that since users sometimes accidentally enable field code display and are confused about that.

    We're unlikely to be able to help you if you cannot reproduce this in a small snippet of a document, and especially if there are unmerged tracked changes in this document.
  • sicahjes
    edited 5 days ago
    I'm pretty confident the issue is related to tracked changes... which is a real bummer as I need them on (so my supervisor can see the revisions). Edit: I was wrong... the flashing is back in both docs, but have left below unchanged so you can see events.

    This is the original file, this flashing is at about 50% the rate of yesterday (so progress, I guess).

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u1502721/uvx9b99cqag2x1wvyipi.gif

    This is in another version of the same file, the only difference is I've made a style adjustment and the tracked changes are off.

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u1502721/dufk3rksaay0onrisnhf.gif

    In order to get the flashing to stop, I need to turn TT off, save the file and then quit / reopen it. It's not until after restarting the file that the flashing will stop. I figured this out just now by turning the tracked changes back on for the second file.

    I guess we're at the limits of what you can do, as trying to get the issue to appear in a small snippet of a document with unaccepted tracked changes isn't a reproduction of my experience. However, perhaps this information will prove useful somehow.

    I must admit... I'm nervous about compiling the thesis, I still have it broken out into a file per chapter. Fingers crossed and positive thoughts!
  • adomasven
    Ok. This flashing is happening because Zotero is updating your document. When you press Refresh, or change the citation style in the document preferences, you will see this "flashing" as Zotero updates the document. Unfortunately we don't display a progress window while updating the document due to technical difficulties on macOS, but we'll see if we may be able to do better in Zotero 7.

    Note that you should generally avoid editing your document when Zotero is running a refresh or you're risking corruption.
  • sicahjes
    edited yesterday at 9:18am
    Thanks, for the clarity on the flashing. Unfortunately, my issues are bigger than this, it's just a symptom I think. It seems that Zotero is struggling to handle large documents.

    Yesterday, I needed to combine my chapters to submit my draft thesis to my panel, and Zotero simply broke. It would not refresh or let me insert a new citation. I ended up having to submit a document with citations that were out of date / incomplete (I cannot stress how sub-optimal this is). It would allow me to insert a bibliography, thankfully (I did not insert this before refreshing) but I couldn't update any citations.

    It would take me multiple restarts before I could get the document preference dialogue to open. Instead, the main Zotero pane would come to the front (either from a minimised state, or from behind another window). This was on a different machine to the one I was experiencing the above issues on (but it did include the same document, plus others).

    Just now, I went back into this document and hit refresh. In approx. 10mins it got through 25 pages. At one point, the Output had the error (1)(+0000139): Error: The operation couldn't be completed. (OSStatus error -1708.), and it appears to have stopped (although, no error notice has come up in Word: D834188673).

    Now it is cycling through:
    [unrelated messages removed — D.S.]

    My Word document also opens a 'save as' dialogue for the Word doc, unprompted.

    Are we meant to use a specific compile process when compiling chapters in Word? I need to be able to compile my thesis.
  • dstillman
    edited yesterday at 9:27am
    You shouldn't get an error, but Mac Word integration is just very slow currently for technical reasons, and refreshing a very large document can take a long time — potentially hours. Your debug output shows an ongoing operation (e.g., "(3)(+0000002): Integration: Adding citationID rSQNWP6E"). So you might just need to wait longer.

    Alternatively, if you're able to compile the final version on Windows (either on a Windows computer or in a Windows 11 ARM VM on your Mac using something like Parallels), that would be another option.

    (We're working with Microsoft on Word changes that will let us create a much faster version for Word for Mac and Word for the web.)
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