This is an issue that gets reported to the Library a few times every year… it’s a rare problem, but a devastating one if you’re 24 hours from dissertation hand-in day.
Students using Write-N-Cite to add references to a long Word document (usually a dissertation/thesis) occasionally find that WnC isn’t happy about processing the document. When they click on the ‘Create Bibliography’ button, the application thinks… for a… while…
…before finally spitting out one of the following two error messages:
- Errors were encountered while processing your file: / The following error occurred attempting to read your document
- Your manuscript was processed successfully, no errors / System error 602. Cannot download formatted document from the server
Either way, no bibliography.
Most of the time, this seems to be caused by the size of the document. Write-N-Cite just will not cope with MS Word documents of >10MB, and who can blame it?
Word documents are often only so big because they contain (raw, uncompressed) images such as screenshots or digital photos. I’ve found it’s usually possible to reduce the file size of the dissertation document by compressing any images in the file, to print quality.
You can do this (in the version of Word on the University of Lincoln’s corporate desktop, anyway: instructions for your version of Word might be here…) by right-clicking on the image and selecting ‘Format Picture…’.
Then, in the ‘Format Picture’ window which appears, select the ‘Picture’ tab, followed by the ‘Compress…’ button (at the bottom of the window). Choose the option to apply to ‘All pictures in document’ and the ‘Print’ resolution (200 dpi), then click OK.
Other tips that seem to have helped in the past:
- Instead of using Write-N-Cite, process your document within RefWorks itself by going to the ‘Bibliography’ page, selecting the option: ‘Format Paper and Bibliography’, and uploading the document directly.
- Make sure you’re using the right version of WnC for your Operating System and version of MS Office/Word. Generally, Write-N-Cite III seems to suffer from fewer problems of this sort than v.2 (which, unfortunately, is the version we’re using on campus).
- If all else fails, try removing appendices, tables etc. from your dissertation, before you process it (then stitch it back together after WnC has done its business). I call this the ‘throwing everything out of the hot air balloon’ method.
Anyone else know of any tricks for getting Write-N-Cite to play nice with overweight Word documents?
