Upgrading to 2.0 breaks existing document's citations

pilpi
Hi,

I upgraded to 2.0, removed openoffice plugin and installed Zotero 2.0 and the integration for openoffice to Firefox on Ubuntu 9.10. With new documents, zotero works fine, but with an existing document that had tons of citations, java throws up an exception (and another dialog after that, see the screenshots in below url) and dies when I try to edit or insert citations. How can I reset the existing document so that I can work on it again?

http://pilpi.net/hop/2010-03-16%20zoteroupgrade/

Thanks,
Olli Savolainen
  • pilpi
    edited March 16, 2010
    By removing all field codes I managed to make it work with the old document, too, but is this really the only way to upgrade, by reinserting all the citations?!

    If so, please at least warn people beforehand about the fact that by upgrading your users are committing to hours of slavery under the reign of zotero.
  • adamsmith
    no, that's certainly not intended or standard behavior - hence the lack of warning - not sure what happened, most likely one citation broke the document - there are troubleshooting steps for that here:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_troubleshooting#debugging_broken_documents
  • pilpi
    Thanks, removing the old bibliography, which was apparently not being recognized as a field at all, and reinserting the bibliography fixed it.

    I can't help thinking though, if this sort of a check could not be done automatically? Also, if this happens enough for you to have a troubleshooting doc for it, I would still probably mention about the possible issues that upgrading may cause, and about the fact that there are easy fixes, to avoid users getting frustrated ahead of time. For me, for example the case was that:

    - First frustration: unexpectedly had to also upgrade the openoffice plugin
    - Second frustration: for some reason my java was not working in Firefox either and I had to do a sudo dpkg-reconfigure sun-java6-plugin to fix that

    ... so I was plenty impatient already beforehand to actually get back to work (alas, the colourful language above). I have fought with getting the integration working several times (during the making of the very same thesis) even in zotero 1.0, so it does seem that they can be expected. Preparing people for the frustration, if you can't do anything else, seems to have a chance of alleviating this.
  • adamsmith
    it's actually quite rare - I spend a good amount of time here and I refer to that section of the documentation quite rarely - and not usually in the context of an upgrade - so warnings all over the place would just unnecessarily frighten users and deter them from upgrading (which in turn would cause many more problems - the number of threads where the solution is "upgrade your copy of Zotero" is in the hundreds).
    There are also warnings about issues after upgrade in the documentation
    http://www.zotero.org/support/2.0#upgrading_from_zotero_1.0
    I know most people don't read the docu - and they shouldn't have to, either -
    but I don't think it makes any sense to confront every person considering an upgrade with fineprint to click through before.

    I can't speak to the automatic check - seems hard to do, because something has actually gone wrong before.
  • pilpi
    edited March 16, 2010
    I actually did run across that and read it, and thought that since it does not mention any specific issues, I probably should not be worried. So it might be worth it to insert a brief warning there that "There are some minor issues that come up for some users when upgrading, but can usually be fixed with ease. Read more...", with a link to the specific issues.

    I celebrated too early, it seems. I closed openoffice, and after I restarted it and opened the document again, now Openoffice writer just gets completely stuck after having loaded it; can't scroll or do anything else in the app. The application can just be killed forcibly. Any thoughts on how to diagnose now? Thanks.
  • dstillman
    From that section:
    You may also run into unforeseen issues after upgrading. Consider delaying your upgrade if you have an important deadline coming up soon and you don't have time for troubleshooting.
    Upgrades of any software carry the risk of new problems. Bugs aren't planned, and we fix them when we have fixes. We can't list every issue every user has ever run into.
    I closed openoffice, and after I restarted it and opened the document again, now Openoffice writer just gets completely stuck after having loaded it; can't scroll or do anything else in the app.
    That sounds more like an OpenOffice problem than a Zotero problem, unless it only happens when you click a Zotero button (or goes away when you disable the Zotero extension in OpenOffice). Are you running 3.2?
  • pilpi
    Running OOo 3.1, which apparently is the version shipping with Ubuntu 9.10.

    This only happens with the version of the document I recreated the bibliography for.

    I tried it again now, took the original document and recreated the bibliography, and restarted OpenOffice. Seems to work for now, don't know what is different from last time. Will report back to you if it breaks again.

    Thanks for all your help.
    Olli

This is an old discussion that has not been active in a long time. Instead of commenting here, you should start a new discussion. If you think the content of this discussion is still relevant, you can link to it from your new discussion.