Zotero library not syncing

ellahatton
My Zotero library is being impossible to sync, with it not being able to sync for 271 days! It also keeps signposting me to files where creator names are too long - is this preventing the other files from syncing? It's asking me to change a lot of files with more than three authors, which just isn't feasible with over 30k files, so I don't know if I should just give up and use something else?

I've tried everything from the syncing guidance, but nothing is working
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    Yes, you'll need to fix those items. Zotero will try to sync other items, but if lots of items are giving errors, it will stop trying. If you're using syncing, you should always fix sync errors as they occur — this is going to be much harder to correct now that you've let it go for so long.

    Long creator names would generally be due to importing from a single bad source with incorrectly formatted data. You should try to determine how you imported the affected items (e.g., a RIS file from some other software) and when they were imported. If you have a ton of them and they were all imported at the same time, your best bet may be to sort the items list by Date Added and just delete those items and empty the trash. We could then help you correct the original file or wherever they came from so that the names are imported correctly.

    But if you've used these items to create citations in word processor documents, filed them into collections, etc. you wouldn't want to delete them — you'd want to fix them in Zotero. We might be able to help with a script for that. But first thing would be to figure out what happened and how many items are affected.
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