Zotero online storage sync problem

r52brown

Dear Zotero team!

I'm a great fan of your software but unfortunately I've now had a major issue with the online storage syncing.

I have only found this out recently after my macbook pro suddenly died and I tried to retrieve a dissertation from the zotero online storage. To my shock the latest file wasn't available but an older version from January 2024 was. I thought zotero was constantly syncing to the online drive every time I had the application open?

I'm now using an older mac and have reinstalled zotero 6 on this whilst I wait for my current one to be fixed or replaced.

Using this one, I can see only see the old version of my dissertation and therefore presume it has only been saved locally on my broken computer despite having all the settings to suggest it will be synced online.

I've now tried putting a few small new files on the software to see if these will automatically load onto the online file storage and they dont. The zotero sync icon seems to be constantly on and never finishes.

Please can you advise what I can do. My settings are on sync automatically and download files as needed.

Thanks
Rich

tim820

First, confirm that you are not at the limit of your online storage quota at the link below (which would explain why some files were not uploaded from your old computer; and which would have been accompanied by a sync error message at the top right corner sync icon):
https://www.zotero.org/settings/storage

If not at your quota, then see https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/changes_not_syncing

dstillman

@r52brown: It's not totally clear if you're referring to data or files here, but the problem would've been on the computer you were using before. Generally, if syncing was failing for some reason, there would be an error icon in the toolbar after every sync attempt. If it was spinning constantly and not finishing, as you're seeing on your current computer, that would obviously also indicate a problem (though it would likely still fail eventually and show an error).

I've now tried putting a few small new files on the software to see if these will automatically load onto the online file storage and they dont. The zotero sync icon seems to be constantly on and never finishes.

Restart Zotero and try again, and if the same thing happens, provide a Debug ID for Zotero startup through a few minutes of the sync icon spinning, using the "Restart with Logging Enabled…" option.

Finally, when you say "I tried to retrieve a dissertation from the zotero online storage", do you mean that you were storing a word processor document in Zotero? That's not really a good idea — Zotero only syncs the entire file, so if you opened the file on multiple computers by mistake, it would be very easy to get an unresolvable file conflict where you would lose data (though you should get a prompt to choose one side or the other). If this is a Word document, you should use Microsoft's own mechanism (OneDrive) for accessing the document from multiple computers and use Zotero storage for PDFs and other files associated with library items.

r52brown

Thanks tim820 and dstillman. I actually ended up downloading the zotero 7 beta version and this has seemed to have resolved it. The files have now uploaded and sync appropriately to the online storage within seconds. Thanks again