lost libraries

jennywalker

I just got a new computer and have seemingly lost all of the libraries I had set up in Zotero in my old computer. Is there any way to recover them, or do I need to set them up all over again? Thank you for your help.

mronkko

Depends a lot on how you had Zotero set up. Do you synchornize Zotero with the Zotero server? Do you still have access to the old computer or backups of the old computer?

jennywalker

No, I do not have access to the old computer or its backups. Unfortunately, I am too ignorant of much about Zotero to have seen this coming or to even know if I had synchronized Zotero with the Zotero server. Thank you for your help, though. I'll start recreating now.

mronkko

You can check if you have synced Zotero by clicking on the "My Library" link below the Zotero logo on this page. If your online library is empty, then it is not possible to recover the libraries unless you have backups of the old computer.

I highly recommend setting up sync. It is not difficult to do.

http://www.zotero.org/support/sync

jennywalker

Yes, I did click on "My Library," and when I saw none there, my heart sank. I will definitely set up sync. Thanks so much for the advice and help.

adamsmith

You can see about sync by click on My Library on the top left of this window. If you see your items displayed, they're synced to the Zotero server and you can get them back. If not, unfortunately, there is nothing you can do.

jennywalker

After I had responded to the first person who replied, I realized I was looking at My Library on the wrong screen. When I clicked on it on the correct screen and also checked my preferences, I found I did have automatically sync enabled, but my list of libraries contains none created after April 2011, and I don't know why. I guess I still have to recreate my libraries I had created since then?

adamsmith

yes, unfortunately. There are all types of possible reasons why this might have happened - a sync error, you just synced manually etc.