Things that I have been told will slow Zotero down

NicolaJay
I use Word for Mac. Will have large thesis when it's done with 300 pages and 1500 references.

Uni advisor suggested (but did not know for sure) that a few things might slow down Zotero when entering references - do you agree - should I avoid?

1. Having multiple (eg 200) PDFs stored within the system (including 'Add note from annotations' which I find very useful).
2. Having multiple word files (eg 400) added via attachment>file
3. Having multiple Google docs linked added via attachment>web link

Which, if any, of these might result in a system that becomes slow - and which element will they affect? I am most concerned about whether they might affect the speed of reference uploads into a doc? If so, I will adjust how I work accordingly.

Thank you
  • adamsmith
    None of these will matter much.
    The only thing that'll really affect the speed of Zotero Word integration is the length of the document and the number of references (I _think_ the latter matters more here but I keep getting that wrong) and there, frankly, a 300page/1500 references document will not bring you much joy in Word for Mac -- it should still be reasonably fast if you turn off automatic citation updating (Document Preferences), but still, the recommendation would be to write the thesis in individual chapter files and only assemble at the end.
  • dstillman
    edited 6 days ago
    (Yeah, none of those matter at all. I don't know where they got that.)
  • NicolaJay
    Thank you both
  • NicolaJay
    Coming back to this - am considering swapping to Windows given that you have advised that a "300page/1500 references document will not bring you much joy in Word for Mac."

    Can you confirm that Zotero's speed and stability etc will be much better on Windows (using Word from 365) than on Word for Mac OS? Do not want to swap if it will be problematic so looking for reassurance.
  • NicolaJay
    Second question: if I have made a document in Word for Mac and have inserted references using Zotero, when I open the same document from a Windows-based machine, will it recognise the Zotero references or do you anticipate issues? (and if there are issues how do I resolve?)

    Third question: if I get a windows machine, presumably I can then download Zotero for Windows to new device, and then ask it to populate my current books, PDFs etc from the web version of Zotero?
  • damnation
    3. You can use Zotero on a variety of computers. It's very common for a researcher to have a Mac at home and a Windows machine at work. It's absolutely possible and common to work with your same Zotero library on different machines. That's the whole point of "Sync".

    2. Yes, it will absolutely recognise the citations.

    1. I wouldn't buy a new computer just for this. As long as you have "automatic updates" for the citations off, inserting of citations should be ok.
    What Word for Mac will be slow with is especially rendering a bibliography at the end. But that you don't need to have insert to work on your document and you can do that at the end, click "Add/edit bibliography" and let your computer run for a while to produce the bibliography.
    And for that you could also just use a friend's/colleague's PC to run the operation if it's indeed impossibly slow.
    (This is not a stability question, only a speed question).
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