Something in Zotero not working correctly for you? Here are some steps you can take to help us find and fix problems.

If you haven't yet, follow steps 1 through 4 on the Getting Help page for searching through documentation and the forums.

If you're experiencing a problem, check the Actions menu () in the Zotero toolbar, before restarting Firefox, for the status of the “Report Errors…” menu option. If a potential Zotero error has occurred, “Report Errors…” will appear in black; otherwise, it will appear in gray and won't be selectable. If it is active, you can first use the error reporting wizard to submit an error report and then post the Report ID you received to the forums. (We don't read error reports sent via Report Errors unless there's a forum post pointing to them, since they're generally not helpful without context and/or follow-up.) Not all problems will show up in the wizard, and not all errors that show up in the wizard will necessarily be related to Zotero, but it's the first thing to try when encountering a problem.

If you aren't able to provide a Report ID, be sure to include your Zotero version, Firefox version, and operating system in your bug report.

If you're experiencing a problem, before restarting Chrome, open the Zotero preferences by typing chrome://extensions into the address bar, pressing return, and clicking the “Options” link underneath “Zotero Connector for Chrome.” If a potential Zotero error has occurred, a “Report Errors” button will be visible in the Report Errors section; otherwise, the Report Errors section will contain the message “Zotero Connector has not experienced any errors since it was first started.” Not all issues result in a reportable error, and not all errors that show up will necessarily be related to Zotero, but it's the first thing to try when encountering a problem.

If you aren't able to provide a Report ID, be sure to include your Zotero Standalone version, Zotero Connector version, Chrome version, and operating system in your bug report.

If you're experiencing a problem, before restarting Safari, open the Zotero preferences by right-clicking anywhere on a webpage and selecting “Zotero Preferences…” If a potential Zotero error has occurred, a “Report Errors” button will be visible in the Report Errors section; otherwise, the Report Errors section will contain the message “Zotero Connector has not experienced any errors since it was first started.” Not all issues result in a reportable error, and not all errors that show up will necessarily be related to Zotero, but it's the first thing to try when encountering a problem.

If you aren't able to provide a Report ID, be sure to include your Zotero Standalone version, Zotero Connector version, Safari version, and operating system in your bug report.

The most important thing you can do to help us fix a problem is to get it to happen again: if you can provide us with steps to consistently reproduce the problem, we can almost certainly fix it quickly or tell you how to fix it. Note that after a problem occurs, other things in Zotero may temporarily break, so it's important to restart Firefox and try to repeat what you did before it occurred.

Post a message to the forums with the exact steps you took to reproduce the problem (or, if you're not able to, with what you were doing when the problem first occurred), what happened, and what you expected to happen. Be sure to list, in order, any buttons or other interface elements that you clicked on, and include exact error messages or other relevant text that you see on-screen.

Syncing isn't working.

After clicking the sync icon I received the following error:

“Unexpected file upload status 504 in Zotero.Sync.Storage.WebDAV._onUploadComplete()”

Report ID: 1840364945

I'm getting an error while editing notes.

Report ID: 1892199645

I get an error if I delete text from a note that matches a search term.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Create a new child note.
2. In the new note, type 'foo', and then click on another item.
3. Search for 'foo' in the search bar. Select the original note from the search results.
4. In the note, click to the right of 'foo' and press Backspace.

Zotero displays the message 'An error has occurred. Please restart Firefox.' in the middle pane.

For serious problems that prevent you from using the reporting wizard—such as the Zotero pane not opening at all—we may need more information:

1. First, be sure you've tried restarting your computer. Many startup errors will go away after a computer restart.

2. Enter about:config in the Firefox address bar, search for devtools.errorconsole.enabled (Firefox 4 and later) or javascript.options.showInConsole (Firefox 3.6), set it to 'true' by double-clicking, and then restart your browser.

2. Close Firefox and delete extensions.ini, extensions.cache, extensions.rdf, extensions.sqlite, and extensions.sqlite-journal (Firefox 4 and later) or compreg.dat and xpti.dat (Firefox 3.6) from the Firefox profile directory. These cache files will be recreated automatically the next time you start Firefox. Note that any disabled extensions will be reenabled.

3. Start Firefox.

4. Go to the Tools menu and select Error Console or Web Developer→Error Console (depending on your Firefox version). In the new window that pops up, click Errors to view only important messages.

5. Look in the console for lines that contain a URL beginning with “chrome://zotero/…” or a message without a URL. (You can ignore any lines with URLs beginning with 'http://', even from zotero.org.) For each line, click on the pink background, go to the Firefox Edit menu and select Copy (or hit Cmd-C (Mac) or Ctrl-C (Win)), and paste the message into your forum post.