Restoring an accidentally deleted Group Library

aldenblatter

As has happened with a few other people in this forum, I am in a group library and all of the collections have accidentally been deleted. There are about 25 people with access to this library, and I noticed it was deleted on my local Zotero about a week ago but only realized it was deleted for everyone 2 days ago. I've read about restoring from the last automatic backup and I looked into my Zotero files. The zotero.sqlite.bk and zotero.sqlite.1.bk were both updated in the last 2 days, which I assume that means I won't be able to restore the files from there.

How would you recommend I proceed from here? Also, is there a way to know who deleted the colletions, and if we figure out who it was would the collections still be sitting in their deleted folder? Thanks in advance!

dstillman

The deletions were made on September 21. Someone in the group who hasn't synced since then would be able to restore — they can disable internet access on their computer and disable auto-sync in Zotero, and then use Replace Online Library for the group. (Alternatively, someone who synced for the first time since 9/21 within the last couple days would be able to restore from the automatic backups.)

I've responded via email with the person who did this. People sometimes do this by accident when trying to free up their own storage space. We may offer additional group permissions in the future to help prevent this sort of thing.

if we figure out who it was would the collections still be sitting in their deleted folder?

No. Collections are only moved to the trash starting in Zotero 7. These collections were just deleted.

aldenblatter

Thanks for the quick response dstillman! Someone in our project with access to the group library has a 139,000 KB file from 11/2023 labeled zotero.sqlite-1.tmp. Is it possible that this is a backup for the group library?

dstillman

That's a temporary file — e.g., from an automatic backup that was interrupted — and may or may not be a complete, valid file. It would also obviously only have data from last November. But they can try the restore process above and see what's in it.

Generally you'd be looking for the most recent zotero.sqlite, zotero.sqlite.bak, or zotero.sqlite.1.bak file from before September 21 (or a more recent .bak file if someone just synced these deletions down for the first time since 9/21).