Revert tags

gpatten

I have made some wide-reaching changes to my tags involving thousands of items that I regret and would like to revert. Doing so manually is not an option. I have complete backups of everything. What do I need to replace in order to regain the tag situation I had earlier? This is Zotero 6.0.30 running on MacOS 12.7.2.

DWL-SDCA

There are automated backups to your Zotero library. How you use them will be a compromise. This depends upon how many items you have added to your library after you began making changes to your tags; how long it has been since the changes (considering the life of Zotero's automated backups); and the balance of time to reenter lost new items vs the reverting of your tags.

Zotero automated backups have saved me. Also my Mac TimeMachine backups have allowed me to select the earlier version of a file I want. That said, you will need to, one way or another, need to carefully assess the amount of effort needed to fix the tag problem while retaining complete library records. I urge you to take some time to consider what is the best solution.

If it is useful knowing what I would do, I would manually work with the tags. You are still on Zotero 6. Zutillo may streamline your tag work. Someone else will need to comment as I haven't tried to use Zutillo to manage/edit tags.

gpatten

Sorry, I should have been clearer. I have complete MacOS time machine backups of everything related to Zotero: the app, the folder in Library/Application Support, the database etc. I presumably don't need to replace them *all* in order to restore the situation from before the changes; presumably a single file will do the trick, but which one? I have no idea where Zotero stores information about tags.

DWL-SDCA

Please wait for the advice of others before taking any action. I don't want my suggestions to be taken as recommendations. You don't want to make an unfortunate situation worse than it currently is.

dstillman

@gpatten: It's just the zotero.sqlite database in your Zotero data directory. You can use your own Time Machine backups or one of the automatic backups in the data directory. See Restoring Your Zotero Data From a Backup and Overwriting Synced Changes (but you only need to restore zotero.sqlite).

gpatten

Thanks, this has worked perfectly.