"Zotero experienced an error updating your document" - google docs

Levin888
Hi Zotero staff,

I experienced an error: "zotero experienced an error updating your document" in a box that popped up after I tried to add citations, i looked through the troubleshooting steps, and i tried most of them already. Regarding step 7, I dont believe there is a problematic citation, as they were all working fine previously. It works fine in a new empty document. I am using Google chrome, would other browsers work better? How do I resolve this issue?

Debug ID: D1514049392.

Kind Regards,

Levin
  • adomasven
    Please submit a Debug ID from Zotero, not Zotero Connector.
  • Levin888
    Hi adomasven,

    Here is the debug ID:
    D1256492150

    Kind Regards,

    Levin
  • adomasven
    We would still ask you to follow the final step of the document troubleshooting steps on a copy of this document, and try to identify if removing some section of the document fixes the issue.
  • Levin888
    Hi adomasven,

    I have just followed the final step of the document troubleshooting step. I narrowed it down to some tables that spans roughly 15 pages in a 220page document. If i remove those tables completely, i can add reference. However, if i dont remove the tables but remove only the references of those tables, i cannot add new references. Do you have any ideas what would be the reason for this kind of scenario?

    One more thing, before you suggest narrowing it further. I have already tried this, I removed each table by table and referencing does not work until all of those tables are removed.

    Kind Regards,

    Levin
  • Levin888
    One more thing i noticed is that if i remove the tables, another citation becomes unlinked (only one specific one), meaning that i might have copied the row from one table to another. Knowing that this is usually an issue on zotero, I tried removing associated lines which I would have copied and pasted from, but even on a fresh copy, deleting those references didnt resolve the problem.
  • adomasven
    The question is whether you can isolate a small snippet of the document that still reproduces the problem. E.g. just the tables themselves. If not, then the error is likely the result of Google Docs API slowness, or it being triggered specifically by tables. This is something that we would like to report to Google, but we would need to provide something reproducible.

    Also, we don't recommend using Google Docs on documents of this size, and you should get a notification from Zotero about that, unless you have disabled it, when you try to work with this document. These kind of issues is precisely why we don't recommend it - since you and Zotero is dependent on the Google Docs editor, which just doesn't get the same amount of use and thus testing with large documents, and also there are inherent limitations to browsers and generally the internet infrastructure that make big documents hard to work with.
  • Levin888
    I did not anticipate my document to be this large and or any issues on google docs as i never had this issue before.

    What would your professional advice be? Because given that i cannot even add a reference, exporting it to another software like word would not be possible. What should be the next step of action now that we know that the tables are causing issues (or at least that segment)?
  • adomasven
    In terms of moving to a different word processor, see Moving Documents with Zotero Citations Between Word Processors. Since you will not be able to run this command with the table present, you should remove it, convert the document, and then manually re-add the table to the converted document in a different word processor, by copying it from Google Docs. Note that support for Zotero citations is limited/not guaranteed on any of the word processors where plugins are available. You may have success with LibreOffice or Word on Windows.

    If you want to help us get this fixed on Google Docs, we would need you to see if you can reproduce this issue if you remove all contents of the document (in a copy) except for these tables. If you can, see if you can strip the tables down to a smaller size, until you can no longer reproduce the issue, or you cannot reduce the size any more. Share that with support@zotero.org and we'll report it to Google, which they should eventually fix.
  • Levin888
    I have just tried clicking the switch word processor just to see if it can convert. It can successfully convert WITH the tables, and be opened in word, it shows that some links were unlinked, which was as I have thought yesterday. However, google docs failed to show that unlinked links unless i removed the tables. I have been successfully able to add references in word. For more context, if it helps, i used a mac. I will check over the document over today to see if there are also areas that didnt convert. Thank you for your assistance.
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