Upgrade StorageWord opens automatically after reinstalling Zotero plugin
Hi everyone,
I'm experiencing a recurring issue where Microsoft Word opens by itself, without any user interaction, even when I'm working in other applications.
After some research, I found similar reports on Microsoft forums suggesting that third-party plugins might be involved — including Zotero. To troubleshoot, I followed a series of steps:
Deleted AutoRecover and temporary files from:
C:\Users\[YourUsername]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\
Cleared the "Startup" folder:
C:\Users\[YourUsername]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\Startup
Removed custom templates from:
C:\Users\[YourUsername]\OneDrive\Documents\Custom Office Templates\
Uninstalled the Zotero plugin via:
Word > File > Options > Add-ins > COM Add-ins
After doing all of this, the issue stopped — Word no longer opened automatically.
However, once I reinstalled the Zotero plugin and started using Zotero again, the problem returned: Word began launching on its own again.
One detail I noticed is that I'm located in Brazil, and other users reporting similar behavior also seem to be in the same region (https://learn.microsoft.com/pt-br/answers/questions/5534157/word-abre-sozinho). While both my work and home setups use different language settings (English and Portuguese, respectively), the issue occurs in both environments. This makes me wonder whether regional configurations or localized Microsoft 365 builds could be contributing to the problem — even though I’m not sure how geographically customized Office installations are.
I’m wondering if anyone else has experienced this behavior or if the Zotero team has any insight into what might be triggering Word to open automatically when the plugin is installed.
Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions!
I'm experiencing a recurring issue where Microsoft Word opens by itself, without any user interaction, even when I'm working in other applications.
After some research, I found similar reports on Microsoft forums suggesting that third-party plugins might be involved — including Zotero. To troubleshoot, I followed a series of steps:
Deleted AutoRecover and temporary files from:
C:\Users\[YourUsername]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\
Cleared the "Startup" folder:
C:\Users\[YourUsername]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\Startup
Removed custom templates from:
C:\Users\[YourUsername]\OneDrive\Documents\Custom Office Templates\
Uninstalled the Zotero plugin via:
Word > File > Options > Add-ins > COM Add-ins
After doing all of this, the issue stopped — Word no longer opened automatically.
However, once I reinstalled the Zotero plugin and started using Zotero again, the problem returned: Word began launching on its own again.
One detail I noticed is that I'm located in Brazil, and other users reporting similar behavior also seem to be in the same region (https://learn.microsoft.com/pt-br/answers/questions/5534157/word-abre-sozinho). While both my work and home setups use different language settings (English and Portuguese, respectively), the issue occurs in both environments. This makes me wonder whether regional configurations or localized Microsoft 365 builds could be contributing to the problem — even though I’m not sure how geographically customized Office installations are.
I’m wondering if anyone else has experienced this behavior or if the Zotero team has any insight into what might be triggering Word to open automatically when the plugin is installed.
Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions!
1. Reinstall the Zotero Word add-in
This is the most common solution and typically resolves the issue by replacing any corrupted files.
Close all open Microsoft Word documents.
Open the Zotero application.
Navigate to Edit > Preferences (or on a Mac, Zotero > Settings).
Click the Cite tab, then select the Word Processors sub-tab.
Click the Reinstall Microsoft Word Add-in button.
Restart Word to see if the issue is resolved.
2. Clear Word's Startup folder
If the standard reinstall does not work, manually removing old template files can fix the problem.
Close all Microsoft Word documents.
Locate and open the Word Startup folder.
On Windows: Press Windows Key + R, type %AppData%\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP into the Run dialog box, and press Enter.
On macOS: In Finder, press Cmd+Shift+G and type ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User Content/Startup/Word into the dialog box.
Delete the Zotero.dotm file and any other old add-in files you find in this folder.
Follow the steps in the first solution to reinstall the Zotero add-in.
Zotero 7
I'm not sure how to identify the exact plugin file here but it came with the "reinstall word plugin" feature within Zotero 7
modified date: Saturday, August 16, 2025, 11:38:22 AM
revision # 10 (date last saved 6/11/2024 10:07PM)
Word is from 365 Apps for Business
Version 2508, Build 19127.20264 CtR
Big Big note here, these symptoms just showed up after I installed Zotero 7, because one of my clients is having the same issue on their machine. I haven't used ANY features/functions of Zotero at all yet. I edited a couple of word documents, saved them, closed word, and here we are.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u2735919/b8o899ski9t6smwxqb4v.png
Does reinstalling the official Zotero.dotm and renaming it to something else also avoid the problem?No — see below.Adomas might have some other ideas, but most likely someone who can reproduce this will need to do further debugging on their system to identify what's causing this. It may be some non-standard security software or some other background utility. But you're reproducing this without anything related to Zotero at all
other than the filename, so I'm afraid there's nothing we can do here.The file doesn't need to named Zotero.dotm for Zotero to work, so if renaming it avoids the problem, you can do that temporarily, but Zotero will try to install another copy of Zotero.dotm eventually, so you would need to do some manual management of this until you figure out the cause.