Zotero deleted my pdfs

arpad.jakab

Hi! Is there a way to regain my pdfs? I have made the mistake of switching accounts and Zotero asked me to remove local data. Now I checked back again, but Zotero basically deleted everything, and although in the webview I can see the publication's titles the corresponding pdfs are gone. What can I do?

dstillman

When you switch accounts, Zotero warns you that it will remove all Zotero data on the computer, tells you to make sure that all data and files you wish to keep have been synced with the old account or backed up, and makes you type "remove local data" and click "Remove Data and Restart". Assuming you synced or backed up data, you can restore by switching back to the old account or restoring from the backup. Otherwise, you would only have whatever data and files were already in the online library for the old account. If you were at your storage quota (as you are for the account you're posting from), you would only have files that fit within the quota.

arpad.jakab

Thank you for your answer! I figured this out already! Pretty lame. Sure, my mistake. But still it's lame and it's purpose evades my understanding.

dstillman

It's simple: different accounts have different data. If Zotero didn't clear local data when you switched accounts, it would merge data from potentially unrelated accounts, which could both make a complete mess of the second library and be a serious privacy issue.

Zotero is extremely clear about what it's going to do here, and requires explicit approval from you before it does it. I'm not really sure what else we could do to make it clearer.

adamsmith

The purpose is to allow folks to remove their data from a shared computer. Since you're not supposed to have multiple Zotero accounts, that'd be the most common scenario for wanting to switch accounts on a computer.

arpad.jakab

Still, a non-destructive user switching functionality would help a lot! :)