Help! Collection Deleted

sbruso

I was trying to organize my sources more effectively for the book I'm working on, and had set up a nesting folder system to do it (ex. Book Project was the collection, and then Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc. were subcollections). When I tried to compile the bibliography from the main collection, Zotero would not include the subcollections in the bibliography. I tried to detach the subcollections from the main collection, but Zotero wouldn't let me do that either. When I clicked on the main collection and selected delete, Zotero assured me it wouldn't delete the items within that collection, but I either misunderstood what that meant, or Zotero did not do what it promised because now they're gone.

All of the subcollections (Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc.) are gone, and with it the sources I keyed to each chapter, and I'm wondering if there's a way to get them back. There was no 'undo' option, and they didn't end up in the trash.

dstillman

No items have been deleted in the last week in your online library. Even if you deleted a collection, you should still see all your items in the library root. (And even if you had chosen "Delete Collections and Items…", the items would simply have been moved to the trash.)

Zotero 7 makes it possible to restore a deleted collection from the trash. If you're not yet using that, you should upgrade to avoid this in the future.

If you're still using Zotero 6 and you want to restore a deleted collection, and you just did this, you should be able to restore it from one of the automatic backups. Note the specific instructions for restoring collections.

sbruso

Thank you very much! I was able to restore the collection from the automatic backups workaround.

Many, many thanks!