If you've been asked to provide a Debug ID to help troubleshoot a problem, follow these simple steps:

1. Open the Advanced pane of the Zotero preferences. You can access the Zotero preferences from the gear menu in the Zotero toolbar. (In Zotero for Firefox, you can also access the Zotero preferences via the Firefox preferences.)
2. Click “Enable” under Debug Output Logging.
3. Immediately perform the relevant action (syncing, saving, importing, etc.).
4. Before doing anything else, click “Submit to Zotero Server” in the Advanced pane of the preferences. After uploading the output, Zotero will provide a Debug ID that you can post to the forums. There's no need to post the actual debug output.
5. Disable debug output logging and click “Clear Output”.

1. Open Zotero preferences
   1. Chrome: type chrome://extensions into the address bar, press return, and click the “Options” link underneath “Zotero Connector.”
   2. Safari: right-click anywhere on a webpage and select “Zotero Preferences…”
2. In the Advanced tab of Zotero Preferences, check the box next to “Enable Logging.” Do not close this window.
3. Immediately perform all the relevant actions (e.g. import item from web page)
4. Go back to the Advanced tab of Zotero Preferences and click Submit to Zotero Server.
5. You will be provided with a Debug ID. Please post the Debug ID to the forums.
6. Uncheck the box next to “Enable Logging.”

For large amounts of output, “Submit to Zotero Server” may return an error. If so, click “Open about:config” in the Advanced pane of the Zotero preferences, search for extensions.zotero.debug.store.submitSize, double-click it, and reduce its value to “500000”. Then try to submit the output again.

If you'd like to follow Zotero's debug output in real-time, you'll need to enable debug output and start Firefox from the command line.

1. In Firefox or Zotero Standalone, go to about:config in the address bar, type zotero.debug in the Filter box, and make sure extensions.zotero.debug.log is set to true. (You can change the setting by double-clicking on the line.)

2. Close Firefox or Zotero Standalone, and then restart it via the command line:

• Open Terminal in /Applications/Utilities

• Go to the Terminal menu and open Preferences. In Settings→Window, make sure Scrollback is set to “Limit to available memory”.

• Paste ”/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin” (Firefox) or ”/Applications/Zotero.app/Contents/MacOS/zotero” (Standalone) into the Terminal window

• Press Return

You should see debug output in the console as Firefox starts.

To capture output for a particular action (e.g., for a translator save attempt), press Cmd-K in the Terminal to clear all previous output before performing the action and then copy the complete output immediately afterwards. To capture the complete output, it may be necessary to change the Scrollback setting to Unlimited in the Advanced pane of the Terminal preferences.

If you receive the message “Command not found” in the Terminal, the location of Firefox on your system may be slightly different, or you may have entered the above line incorrectly. Ctrl-click on the icon you use to open Firefox and select Show in Finder. Look at the name of the Firefox application and the folder it is in. Replace “Firefox” in the line above with the name you see in the Finder. If Firefox is not located in the Applications folder, press Command-I and look at the “Where:” field to see the full path, and replace ”/Applications” in the above line with that path. If there are any spaces in the path or app name, you'll need to surround the entire path with quotation marks. For example, if Firefox is named “Firefox 10.0”, you might use this line (quotation marks included):

"/Applications/Firefox 10.0.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin"

If you receive the message “dyld: unknown required load command 0x80000022 Trace/BPT trap” in the Terminal, use this command instead:

arch -i386 /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin

3. When you are done, if you don't plan to generate debug output frequently, return to about:config and set extensions.zotero.debug.log to false.

Note: The debug console on Windows XP drastically slows down Zotero.

1. In Firefox, go to about:config in the address bar, type zotero.debug in the Filter box, and make sure extensions.zotero.debug.log is set to true. (You can change the setting by double-clicking on the line.)

2. Close Firefox, and then restart it via the command line:

• Start, Run

• "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -console

You should see debug output in the console as Firefox starts. After performing the relevant action (e.g., saving via a translator), immediately copy the complete content by clicking the title bar icon and selecting Edit→Select All and then Edit→Copy.

If you receive the error “Windows cannot find 'C:\Program Files\Mozila Firefox…”, the location of Firefox on your system may be slightly different, or you may have entered the above line incorrectly. Find an existing shortcut to Firefox (e.g. on your desktop or in the Start menu), right-click it, select Properties, make sure the Target field is selected, and copy it to the clipboard by pressing Ctrl-C. Click Cancel to close the shortcut window. Back in Start→Run, clear the field and paste in the clipboard by pressing Ctrl-V. At the end of the field, after the second quotation marks, add a space followed by '-console' (a hyphen and the word console, without quote marks).

Note: The first time viewing debug output on Windows, it's helpful to click the icon in the top left of the console window, click Properties, go to the Layout tab, and set the Screen Buffer Size height to the maximum of 9999. Click OK and choose “Save properties for future windows with same title”, and then close Firefox and start it again the same way as above.

3. When you are done, if you don't plan to generate debug output frequently, return to about:config and set extensions.zotero.debug.log to false.

1. In Firefox, go to about:config in the address bar, type zotero.debug in the Filter box, and make sure extensions.zotero.debug.log is set to true. (You can change the setting by double-clicking on the line.)

2. Close Firefox, and then restart it via the command line.

You should see debug output in the console as Firefox starts. After performing the relevant action (e.g., saving via a translator), immediately copy the complete content to the clipboard.

3. When you are done, if you don't plan to generate debug output frequently, return to about:config and set extensions.zotero.debug.log to false.