Lost of "Publication" & "Year" Data

yoke7611

I have been using zotero in different computers, with the same database.
Recently, the data of "Publication" in the database is troubling me.
Most of the journals, the journal title, and even date of journal has gone missing.
All other information are still there, but without these two most important things.
Whenever I refresh the Zotero inside Word, my citations will lost these two informations.
e.g. from Albino (2007), become Albino (n.d.), and in the list of bibliography, no more Journal title.
Can somebody help me???

adamsmith

how are you moving the database from one computer to the other?

yoke7611

Dear Adam:
I choose "Preference" inside Zotero, then click "show data directory", then copy all the files inside that folder.
Later, I copy the same file in data directory of another computer.

adamsmith

huh - strange. Probably this is something Dan's gotta look at, but as a start, have you checked database integrity in the advanced tab of the preferences?

fbennett

yoke7611: Do you make the copy after shutting down Firefox and confirming that there are no other instances of Firefox running on the system (through task manager or whatever)? And is FF completely shut down on the target machine when the files are copied to it?

dstillman

I can't really think of any way for data for individual fields to be lost if you're copying the entire Zotero database and using the same version on each machine. If you were using an export format (RIS, BibTeX, etc.), that could be a different matter.

Also, it's not entirely clear from your post—is the data missing in Zotero itself on the other machine, or just in the Word plugin?

yoke7611

Dear Adam:
Database integrity?? Sorry, not so sure how to check this, can you guide me?

Dear fbennett:
Oops, I copied those files, sometimes while FF is open, sometimes after FF is closed. Will it be different???

Dear Dan:
The year and publication, missing in Word.
I have inserted that citation earlier, when I re-open the same word file, insert another citation, zotero will update my bibliography, and changed the info of the earlier citation, with year and name of journal missing. Then when I check in ZOtero, the same citation's information, both year and journal name are gone.
I am sure that the same citation, year and journal name were inside Zotero and Word file, cause I have save the previous version of the word file in different file name. Those info are inside.

dstillman

If they're not present in Zotero itself, then Word and the Word plugin (which never make any changes to the Zotero database itself) are irrelevant. So if there's a problem with the data in Zotero, forget Word and focus on Zotero itself.

With this in mind, can you provide any additional information? Are you positive you're copying the entire database rather than using export/import? Can you reproduce this with new items?

You can check database integrity from the Advanced pane of the Zotero preferences.

You should never copy files from the Zotero data directory with Firefox open, as the transferring a library page notes. But unless there are database integrity errors, that's unlikely the issue.

yoke7611

Dear Dan:

Yes, I copied and paste all files inside the folder of Data Directory displayed after I click "Show Data Directory". Then in another pc, I click the same folder, and paste everything inside. I tried export and import before, my entire database cann't be displayed, thus I never try to use import/export again.

I have just check the database integrity from both my pc, both also displayed "errors were found in the Zotero database".

Please tell me what should I do?

dstillman

Use the DB Repair Tool.

yoke7611

Dear Dan:
Thanks, I have repaired my database in one pc, later will transfer to another pc to try, hopefully is ok.

Can I know the possible reasons of database corruption?? So that I can avoid it in the future.

adamsmith

Oops, I copied those files, sometimes while FF is open, sometimes after FF is closed. Will it be different???

almost certainly that's been the case. Always copy the files after closing FF.