Upgrade StoragePDF and notes missing for ONE pdf! Please help!
I have v6.0.37 on my Mac, sync'd to web library, and use Better Notes.
I was working in a PDF during the week, with annotations, notes, tags etc and linked between notes.
Today, just that ONE paper is completely gone. (If I accidentally moved it to trash, I'd find it there). It's like it never existed. The sync'd web library shows nothing.
I can still see the link to the related note in another note I have, but when I click on it, it reverts back to the same note.
I've done the recommended data directory stuff... but it doesn't help if I'm looking for one paper with all the notations etc I've made.
Any ideas?
I was working in a PDF during the week, with annotations, notes, tags etc and linked between notes.
Today, just that ONE paper is completely gone. (If I accidentally moved it to trash, I'd find it there). It's like it never existed. The sync'd web library shows nothing.
I can still see the link to the related note in another note I have, but when I click on it, it reverts back to the same note.
I've done the recommended data directory stuff... but it doesn't help if I'm looking for one paper with all the notations etc I've made.
Any ideas?
The item:
Blackwell, L. S., Trzesniewski, K. H., & Dweck, C. S. (2007). Implicit Theories of Intelligence Predict Achievement across an Adolescent Transition: A Longitudinal Study and an Intervention. Child Development, 78(1), 246–263.
Note: I've added another copy to my library because I needed to work on it (the new one has the 'call number' as 5
Thank you :)
1) There is indeed only one copy of that item in your library currently, but the item that exists has been in the library since June 1, so I'm not clear how that would be a new copy (though this one only has annotations since the 15th).
2) You (or someone/something with access to your library) deleted lots of items (which can include annotations) on June 13–14. Not sure if that was intentional, but it's possible the item was in there.
3) A third-party tool has API access to your library. We can't make any guarantees about what such tools might do.
1) Yup, I had collected papers from a few different literature searches. When I brought them together to start working on, I delete the duplicates. The copy that I'm using now was a copy that I hadn't deleted yet. So yes, it was there from the beginning of June, it was in another folder and I hadn't touched it.
2) That's interesting... I didn't do a bunch of deleting (that I can remember!), and when I do, I remove them to the trash, which means that I'd have found it there. There's a 'delete permanently' option, I know... but I NEVER use that, because I am terrified that I'll lose something permanently that I actually need. So if I deleted it, it would've been (I presumed), still in the trash.
3) Yup, I figured that. I'm not sure if this is the issue, but I realise it could be. I understand this challenge, so I'm going to delete it, just in case it causes further issues.
I downloaded Zotero to my iPad as well, which I was using last week (around 13 and 14), so I wonder if that has anything to do with this? When I saw I'd lost my stuff, I knew I had that paper open on my iPad, so I quickly switched it to airplane mode, to prevent it from sync'ing, and it was there, highlights and annotations etc. I tried exporting the PDF, but it doesn't export notations. As soon as I connected to the internet, I got a message saying that the paper had been deleted on other devices, and gave me the option or 'restoring', which I clicked on... but nothing happened and the paper disappeared :) No idea if that's relevant!
Thank you for your response
Did you make a copy of all the zotero.sqlite.bak files in your data directory right when this happened, as per the restore instructions? Regardless of how this happened, you still should be able to restore to an automatic backup that at least includes the original item, even if the backup doesn't include all recent annotations. If you did find a backup with the original item, we might at least be able to have a better sense of what happened. You'd have to follow all the steps, including temporarily disable auto-sync. (If you didn't back up your data directory at the time, though, your automatic backups might now be from after this happened.)
Let's hope that this was a once-off, I'm hoping that I haven't lost more stuff than this. But I'll make sure I follow the restore instructions if I come across this again.
Thank you for your assistance :)
Same problem as two weeks ago. One file I last worked on yesterday has disappeared.
Farok, N.H.M., Mahmud, N., 2020. MINDSET AND GRIT AS THE PREDICTOR OF ACADEMIC SUCCESS. Jurnal Kemanusiaan 63–70.
Since the last incident, I removed the external add-on (I had been using BetterNotes). Thankfully, I moved all my annotations to an external programme.
The file is not in the trash. I followed the restore instructions (as much as I think I've been able to!), but it's not there.
I've been using Zotero for about a year and never had this issue when I didn't sync, and only had everything on my Mac. I thought this would be better and only more recently moved to the option of sync'ing online, but now I'm concerned about constantly losing stuff (and possibly without realising it). I'm considering unlinking my account to keep it all on my Mac only. Thoughts?
2) As I said before, a third-party tool still has access to your library via the API, and it deleted a number of items in your library today, about 45 minutes before you posted. I'm not talking about a plugin like Better Notes — it's a web service that you granted access to your Zotero library. You can see it in your key settings and revoke access if you want. I don't know if the items you're looking for were among those deleted items. (We can't tell exactly what was deleted, but it looks like potentially three top-level items with some number of child attachments/notes/annotations.)
3) If the data you're looking for was within your library within the last day or two, restoring to one of the automatic backups would show it again, if you follow the instructions correctly. You can see the timestamps on the files to see when they were made. So if you're not seeing the data, either you're not following the instructions or it didn't exist at the time of the backup.
Yup, I forgot about the additional third-party tool, it was ARIA, I removed it after your last message.
(And yes, there was a duplicate paper in my library, but it was blank and wasn't the one I had been working on)
I also didn't sync to zotero.org for the last week, because I'm now afraid of changing anything.
And... have found another paper missing today. It had highlights, but no notes / child notes etc (I've moved my notes elsewhere).
I tried the backup restore option from yesterday, which was the last time I worked on my stuff (although not that file), but it's not there either, so it must have been lost before that?
I've deleted a few things over the last few days, but not a lot (Like the 45 that you mentioned in the last message, definitely wasn't me!). I realise you can't see the details, but have there been 'bulk' deletions recently?!
So, do I backup manually after everyday? The last time I sync'd with zotero.org, I couldn't get anything back that way, so I don't think that's the answer? (Unless the add-on was the biggest problem?).
But if I work on stuff, and then realise something's missing, how do I go back to a previous backup and pull out the notations etc on just the papers I've lost? If I realise I've lost something 5 days later, I've made other changes to everything else, so how do I restore just the one I lost?
And is there anyway I can see the deletions / movements recently, so that I can see whether I've lost anything? When I delete something myself (which I've accidentally done occasionally, I find it in the trash and restore it)... so I know it's not my accidental deletion.
I realise I'm not really great at all the tech stuff, and apologies for the errors on my side, but I really do enjoy using Zotero, (I moved from Mendeley which I REALLY didn't like!). But I'm now a little nervous about losing stuff that I've worked on, that I don't even realise is gone.
Any other advice? Thanks for your patience.
A plugin also could've deleted something without it going to the trash.
We're certainly not aware of anything that would cause Zotero itself to just delete items randomly, and that's not we've received other reports of. Again, that 45 includes individual annotations as well as attachments and notes, so it could easily have just been a single top-level item. Zotero maintains two automatic backups going back a couple days. If you want more, you can keep additional backups until you figure out what's going on. (As noted there, on a Mac, ideally you would just be using Time Machine, which makes automatic incremental backups of your entire system without your needing to worry about specific programs.)
To actually recover specific data from a backup, see Restoring Your Zotero Data From a Backup and Overwriting Synced Changes. The exact process depends on what exactly was deleted and what caused the deletion, but before overwriting anything (Step 3 there), you'd just want to actually find a backup that contained the data that was missing, which might allow us to figure out what happened.
Thank you
I have to say, I really like using Zotero, I've looked around at a lot of other options, paid and free, and I tried some others, and I can't find anything that works for me as well as this, so thanks for helping :)
Very relieved about that!