Report ID 612754755

karenmcmurray2008 · 2026-03-14T22:52:33+00:00

I am in finals week and the Lookup function by identifier is not working! I am in desparate need of help. The first time, I told me I could not find the item because I needed more storage. I paid $20 for increased storage and tried again. That's when it started to tell me that it can't find what I'm looking for. Why am I paying for something that doesn't work? please help asap!

Here are two examples:
ISBN: 978-1717432339
ISBN:978-1-60608-946-0

dstillman · 2026-03-14T22:59:44+00:00

It certainly didn't tell you it couldn't find the item because you needed more storage. That's about file syncing and is totally unrelated to metadata lookup.

The first ISBN is just a self-published book that's only on Amazon. Zotero won't be able to retrieve metadata for that.

The second one is on WorldCat, but WorldCat may currently be rejecting lookups — they use pretty strict anti-bot measures that periodically break things. Other ISBNs that are available from other sources should continue to work. There's no single source of metadata for ISBNs, so ISBN lookups aren't as reliable as DOIs or other identifiers.

karenmcmurray2008 · 2026-03-14T23:57:37+00:00

Thanks for your response. I'll have to find another book to test that's not already in my dataset.

Please note, however, that I did receive a pop-up about storage AFTER attempting to search by ISBN. Afterall, if I've reached a storage limit, it makes sense that I would have to pay for more storage or delete entries to free up more space before I can add more. I was under the impression that once I paid for the additional storage, I would have no problems. With both issues happening at the same time, there's no way for an end user to know these subtleties of the system.

warguelles · 2026-03-15T00:56:00+00:00

Under settings, at the top of this page, you can check your storage occupancy.

dstillman · 2026-03-15T02:31:54+00:00

Please note, however, that I did receive a pop-up about storage AFTER attempting to search by ISBN.

I mean, you didn't — you received it when Zotero tried to sync, which it would've done at startup or whenever you made any change to your library (e.g., adding, editing, or deleting an item). If adding an item by identifier failed, it wouldn't even try to sync at that point, since nothing would've changed. You were just seeing a totally unrelated error elsewhere in the Zotero window.

You don't even need an account to use Zotero, let alone sync, so you can always save as much as you want to your local library.

Even for syncing, the quota error specifically says it's about file syncing: "You have reached your Zotero File Storage quota. Some files were not uploaded. Other Zotero data will continue to sync to the server."