# Bug Report: Endless progress bar when inserting citation in document with Zotero citations in figure/table captions

## Environment
- Zotero 7 (latest version)
- Microsoft Word (Windows)
- Citation style: Cite Them Right 12th edition (author-date/Harvard)
- Language: German (Austria)
- "Automatically update citations" is disabled

## Problem Description

When attempting to insert a new citation via the Zotero Word plugin, the green progress bar appears but never completes. The citation dialog accepts the selected reference, but after pressing Enter, the progress bar runs indefinitely and Word becomes unresponsive. The only way to recover is to force-quit both Word and Zotero via Task Manager.

Any subsequent attempt to use Zotero in the same session produces the error:
**"A word processor integration command is already running."**

Additionally, on every document open and before each citation attempt, the following warning appears:
**"Citation/Bibliography is wrongly placed in index area, please delete the placed citation/bibliography in index area."**

## Root Cause Identified

The document is a PhD dissertation (~228 Zotero citations) containing **77 Zotero field codes inside figure and table captions** (Word caption style). These captions are referenced by Tables of Contents (TOC fields) for generating Lists of Figures and Tables.

When Word generates these lists, it copies the caption text including the nested Zotero field codes into the TOC field area. This creates a field-inside-field situation that Zotero cannot process, causing the infinite loop.

A diagnostic VBA macro confirmed:
- 228 ZOTERO fields total in the document
- 77 of these are located in caption paragraphs
- 4 TOC fields (Table of Contents, List of Tables, List of Figures, List of Illustrations)
- Even after deleting all TOC fields, the "index area" error persists and the progress bar still hangs

## Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a Word document with multiple figures/tables
2. Add Word captions (Insert > Caption) to figures/tables
3. Insert Zotero citations into the caption text (e.g., "Figure 1: Rainfall distribution (Smith, 2023)")
4. Repeat for ~50+ captions
5. Insert a List of Figures or List of Tables (References > Insert Table of Figures)
6. Attempt to insert a new Zotero citation anywhere in the document
7. → Progress bar hangs indefinitely

## Impact

This issue completely blocks any further work with Zotero in the affected document. The dissertation cannot be edited with Zotero active. The only known workaround is to unlink all 77 Zotero field codes in captions to plain text via VBA macro (`Field.Unlink`), which permanently removes the Zotero connection for those citations.

## Feature Request / Suggestion

1. **Detection**: Zotero should detect and warn users when citations are placed in caption paragraphs that are linked to TOC fields, ideally at the moment of insertion.

2. **Graceful handling**: Instead of hanging indefinitely, Zotero should skip or flag problematic citations in index areas and continue processing the rest of the document.

3. **Caption support**: Given that citing sources in figure and table captions is extremely common in academic writing (especially dissertations and theses), proper support for citations in captions should be considered a priority feature. The current situation — where Zotero allows insertion but then breaks the entire document — is worse than blocking insertion entirely.

4. **Documentation**: The troubleshooting page mentions this issue briefly, but it should be more prominent, especially for new users writing dissertations. A clear warning like "Do not place Zotero citations in figure/table captions if you plan to generate a List of Figures/Tables" would save many researchers hours of debugging.

## Workaround Applied

A VBA macro was used to:
1. Identify all Zotero field codes in caption paragraphs
2. Convert them to plain text (Field.Unlink) while preserving the visible citation text
3. All Zotero citations in the main body text remain fully functional

This is not an ideal solution as it breaks the dynamic link between Zotero and the caption citations, but it is the only way to restore document functionality.