Word for Windows: "Zotero experienced an error updating your document"

dstillman · 2026-06-12T15:33:41+00:00

This discussion was created from comments split from: Word for Windows: "Zotero experienced an error updating your document".

_Elysian · 2026-06-12T13:28:19+00:00

Hi Zotero teams

I'm experiencing the same issue after updating to Zotero 9.0.5. Inserting citations or editing bibliography in Word all trigger the error "Zotero experienced an error updating your document."I have already tried all steps in the official debugging guide

My environment:
Zotero version: 9.0.5
Word version: Microsoft 365 MSO (64-bit) Build 2605, Version 16.0.20026.20168
OS: Windows 11

my report ID is : 906780781

dstillman · 2026-06-12T15:35:09+00:00

(The Windows-update issue was fixed in Zotero 9.0.5, so moving this to a new thread.)

Integration.Session.editBibliography: called without loaded citations

If it works in a new, empty document, you'll need to follow the troubleshooting steps through to the end for your existing document. Note that the last step will by definition isolate the problem.

_Elysian · 2026-06-13T16:23:06+00:00

I've found the issue that I wasn't aware that citations need to be inserted via Zotero first before the bibliography can be generated. Since my in-text citations were all typed manually rather than inserted through Zotero, the bibliography function had no linked citations to work with, which caused the error.
Thank you for your response

dstillman · 2026-06-13T21:29:33+00:00

You shouldn't get the above error, though, unless you're activating the plugin somehow other than by clicking Add/Edit Citation or Add/Edit Bibliography. Clicking Add/Edit Bibliography in a document without Zotero citations just displays a message that says "You must insert a citation before performing this operation."

What exactly were you clicking?