Upgrade StorageZotero impossibly slow/buggy with Word for Mac
Posting here as suggested by @adomasven in this thread (https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/502839#Comment_502839)
Report ID: 1662835405
I'm using Zotero 7.0.29 and Word for Mac 16.103.1, with the relevant Zotero plugin. New Mac with fast M4 processor/lots of memory running latest version of macOS. I'm editing a book. It's a single Word document of about 240 pages/74,000 words with about 260 Zotero endnotes, some of which contain more than one citation.
When I add an endnote, which I do from the Word Zotero ribbon and the Add/Edit Citation button, the red Zotero search dialog appears. It generates an endnote that says {Citation}, and correctly inserts an endnote reference. But, most commonly, no matter what I type into the red Zotero dialog, the spinning wheel on the right spins for ever.
A temporary fix for this seems to be to restart the Zotero macOS app.
When I do that it does then work as expected, a single time, but: (1) it takes an age (perhaps 60 seconds) to populate the endnote with the selected citation(s), and (2) the next time I try to add a citation I get the spinning wheel spinning for ever (as above). In other words, I need to restart Zotero in between each new citation.
When I try to edit a citation (by selecting the endnote reference and, in the Word Zotero ribbon, clicking the Add/Edit Citation button) the red Zotero search dialog appears but it contains nothing, so there's nothing to edit. The only way I have found to edit a citation is to delete and recreate it.
I've recently returned to working on this book after a spell when I wasn't working on it. These problems seem to have occurred only since my return to it in the last two or three weeks.
Having seen advice elsewhere to switch off 'Automatically update citations', I have tried doing that (Word Zotero ribbon/Document preferences). That immediately triggers a process that takes several minutes, going through the document, where every endnote reference is replaced with a field called {Citation}. The content of the endnotes themselves remains intact but the loss of the endnote references renders the document unusable and I have to revert to a saved version.
I would prefer not to have to break the book into multiple Word documents.
Advice much appreciated! Many thanks.
Adam
Report ID: 1662835405
I'm using Zotero 7.0.29 and Word for Mac 16.103.1, with the relevant Zotero plugin. New Mac with fast M4 processor/lots of memory running latest version of macOS. I'm editing a book. It's a single Word document of about 240 pages/74,000 words with about 260 Zotero endnotes, some of which contain more than one citation.
When I add an endnote, which I do from the Word Zotero ribbon and the Add/Edit Citation button, the red Zotero search dialog appears. It generates an endnote that says {Citation}, and correctly inserts an endnote reference. But, most commonly, no matter what I type into the red Zotero dialog, the spinning wheel on the right spins for ever.
A temporary fix for this seems to be to restart the Zotero macOS app.
When I do that it does then work as expected, a single time, but: (1) it takes an age (perhaps 60 seconds) to populate the endnote with the selected citation(s), and (2) the next time I try to add a citation I get the spinning wheel spinning for ever (as above). In other words, I need to restart Zotero in between each new citation.
When I try to edit a citation (by selecting the endnote reference and, in the Word Zotero ribbon, clicking the Add/Edit Citation button) the red Zotero search dialog appears but it contains nothing, so there's nothing to edit. The only way I have found to edit a citation is to delete and recreate it.
I've recently returned to working on this book after a spell when I wasn't working on it. These problems seem to have occurred only since my return to it in the last two or three weeks.
Having seen advice elsewhere to switch off 'Automatically update citations', I have tried doing that (Word Zotero ribbon/Document preferences). That immediately triggers a process that takes several minutes, going through the document, where every endnote reference is replaced with a field called {Citation}. The content of the endnotes themselves remains intact but the loss of the endnote references renders the document unusable and I have to revert to a saved version.
I would prefer not to have to break the book into multiple Word documents.
Advice much appreciated! Many thanks.
Adam
Separately we would also want to see a snippet that produces the issue you describe with automatic citation updates disabled. That is if the snippet you create above doesn't reproduce the issue.
This will help us identify what's causing the problem and fix it for you and other users.
Then you may try install Zotero Beta, where some of the issues you see may be fixed as we've reworked and improved the citation dialog.
I've gone through the [troubleshooting instructions](https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/debugging_broken_documents). Details are logged below.
Just to summarise the problems:
1. Creating a new endnote citation takes (I've now timed it) 35 seconds.
2. I often have to restart Zotero before being able to create a new endnote citation. If I don't, when the plugin dialog appears to select the citation(s), its spinning wheel never stops.
3. When I try to edit an existing citation (by selecting the endnote reference and, in the Word Zotero ribbon, clicking the Add/Edit Citation button) the red Zotero search dialog appears but it contains nothing, so there's nothing to edit. The only way I have found to edit a citation is to delete and recreate it.
4. Switching off 'Automatically update citations' triggers a process that takes several minutes, going through the document, where every endnote reference is replaced with a field called {Citation}. The content of the endnotes themselves remains intact but the loss of the endnote references renders the document unusable and I have to revert to a saved version.
# Log of troubleshooting
Steps refer to steps in [this document](https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/debugging_broken_documents).
> Step 4: “In Word Options → Advanced, make sure “Typing replaces selected text” is checked.”
This seems to be written for Word for Windows. In Word for Mac, there’s an option in Preferences/Edit called “Replace existing text as you type (overtype mode)”. I'm not keen to switch that on as non-standard, inconvenient, and likely to result in lost text.
> Step 7: “Try copying and pasting the document content into a new document to see if the problem goes away.”
The problem doesn’t go away.
> Step 10: “Open the copied file and check if you get the error after switching to a different bibliography style.”
Switching bibliography style triggers the process, documented above (issue 4), which goes through the whole document replacing every endnote reference with a field that says {Citation}.
> Step 12: “While debugging, if you are using Fields mode in the Word plugin, it may help to display field codes rather than formatted text. To do this, press Alt/Option-F9 (or Alt/Option-Fn-F9) in Word.”
This seems to be written for Words for Windows. I’m not sure if this is an instruction I can follow in Word for Mac.
> Step 13: “Isolate the problematic citations. … Unless the error still occurs if you completely clear the contents of the document, *this final step will by definition identify the problem.*"
I’m not sure the final statement is correct: it assumes that the problem is to be found in one or more of the document’s citations.
In any event, the problem with editing citations (described above) remains even if I completely clear the contents of the document.
> “You should also send the document excerpt from Step 11 and a link to your forum thread to support@zotero.org”
Is this in fact referring to step 13?
> “Then you may try install Zotero Beta, where some of the issues you see may be fixed as we've reworked and improved the citation dialog.”
Looks nicer, seems to work faster, but doesn’t seem to solve issues 2 – 4 above. I have reverted to the stable release (7.0.29).
Grateful for any advice about where to go next with this!
Many thanks again,
Adam
You should either create a new document in Word that reproduces this issue, or try to create a small snippet from your existing document by following step 13 in the troubleshooting instructions and send it to support@zotero.org. Having a document where the issue is reproducible will allow us to fix it.
I've created a new document that reproduces the issue, and emailed it. Do let me know if there's more I can do to help. And thanks so much for your support with this.