Annotations Gone from Files November/December 2022

sophie.kasahara

Hello!
I recently re-openned some of my Zotero files from November/ December 2022 and noticed all of the annotations are gone. Is there a way to get them back?
Thank you!
Sophie

dstillman

Only three items (annotations are technically a kind of item) have been deleted in your online library since December 9th. So if these are annotations created after that, you're likely misremembering this or looking in the wrong place.

How are you determining that they're gone? Note that if you're using an external PDF reader, annotations you created in Zotero wouldn't show up.

sophie.kasahara

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly! The specific ones I noticed are from the "Final Equity Paper" folder I have. I would say at least 10 of those documents used to have annotations in the Zotero desktop app.

Is there a way to retrieve those annotations? Thanks!

adamsmith

How about the second part of the question:

How are you determining that they're gone? Note that if you're using an external PDF reader, annotations you created in Zotero wouldn't show up.

sophie.kasahara

I'm not sure if the Zotero desktop app counts as an external PDF reader? Can you clarify how I would find any annotations that are stored in Zotero but don't show up when I open the article within Zotero?

adamsmith

External refers to external to Zotero (so Acrobat, Preview, FoxIt, etc.).

If you open an article with annotations in Zotero, you would see them on the left and highlighted in the text, so it doesn't sound like they're there.

sophie.kasahara

Ahhh I see. Yes they are not in Zotero when I open the app. Other older files still have their annotations when I open them. I would really like the annotations back and I am worried about other annotations disappearing in the future. :/

dstillman

Unfortunately there was a temporary bug in December where performing certain actions on an attachment in the web library could wipe out all of its annotations. We fixed this in mid-December, but it looks like you hit it at the time.

I was able to restore most of the annotations — 455 in total from before Dec. 1 — but around 80 of them from the first week in December couldn't be restored.

I'm very sorry for this. We added additional tests to the web library to make sure something like this doesn't happen again.

sophie.kasahara

Thank you so much for restoring those 455!! It took me a long time to annotate those so it's great to have it back. The 80 lost ones feel manageable. I really appreciate you helping me! I was getting worried! (: