Problems with sync (Zotero Standalone 4.0.1)

uGLJJINKYvnyAGYRcjBj

That sounds good. Thank you so much for all your help and efforts (which other organisation would give that kind of excellent support by its product's lead developer himself?) and also for your tip re the DB Repair Tool!

[Two suggestion for the future, if I may:
(1) It would be great if the RTF-scan function could be updated in EndNote-like fashion, such that placeholders include unique identifiers, work with names including diacritics and can be updated by Zotero to true Zotero-citations including field codes. This way users not only could combine Zotero with software such as Scrivener (which I use for all writing projects), but also keep Word or OpenOffice files clean and uncrowded until the scan.
(2) The possibility to abbreviate journal articles (matched to the Journal Abbr field) is great, but there is not yet a comparable solution for abbreviations of series titles, although this is required for many European styles.
It would be great if a future version of Zotero could include these functions, especially for scholars in the humanities. EndNote has many disadvantages, but it has these two functions for more than 10 years now; this almost prevented me from switching to Zotero.]

uGLJJINKYvnyAGYRcjBj

As to your question (I was still editing my last post): the upload (c.q. sync) from what I call the original library; I did not change anything in Zotero since I updated to 4.0.3 about one hour again.

dstillman

Oh, I see. When you received the error above, your upload actually had made it to the server and was being processed, and that's the one I was saying completed successfully. But since your local client is still under the impression that it failed, it's now (unfortunately) downloading (not uploading) all the data back. There may be a delay when that finishes and the local client processes the data (which should be identical to what you already have, so hopefully will result in no changes or conflicts). After that's done, you should be set.

adamsmith

We have 1) in mind - the reason this is harder in Zotero is because it allows sync across multiple machines, making unique item IDs more complex.

2) actually changed recently - journal abbreviations are now matched against an internal list by default (that overrides the journal abbreviation field - you can change that in the Word plugin). If I understand you correctly, you just want a field for series abbreviation, though, correct?

uGLJJINKYvnyAGYRcjBj

It is still syncing and I will let you know whether the result looks all right after the sync will be finished. Moreover, I would like to repeat my thanks as expressed in my penultimate post (which also includes two suggestions for future versions).

uGLJJINKYvnyAGYRcjBj

Thanks, adamsmith. I am very pleased with your plans for (1); I think that this function will surely be worthwhile and will appeal to many scholars who have large writing projects.
As to (2), what I mean is a field for series abbreviation to which styles can directly or indirectly refer(such as styles now already can use the information in the journal abbreviation field for journal abbreviation).

uGLJJINKYvnyAGYRcjBj

Still syncing -- strange that downloading seems to take much more time than uploading ...

uGLJJINKYvnyAGYRcjBj

The download-part of the sync operation ("getting updated data from Zotero sever") seems to last now already more than one hour, and all items are still visible in Zotero SA; is it possible that sync went into a loop and will never finish?

dstillman

No. It will finish. It's not taking longer, per se—it just ended up on a server that couldn't handle it and was failing. It's now on another server and underway.

uGLJJINKYvnyAGYRcjBj

I see; thanks for your efforts.

dstillman

Should be done now.

uGLJJINKYvnyAGYRcjBj

Yes, but there was again an error message. Plus I made an error myself, unfortunately: instead of clicking on the error icon, I clicked on the sync icon. We will see what happens now (whether it completes sync without any error message or not).

uGLJJINKYvnyAGYRcjBj

Sync ended, again with an error message; Repord ID = 400317229.
Should I restart Zotero and try to Restore to Zotero Server (or better from Zotero Server)?

dstillman

You definitely shouldn't Restore to Server. And let's see what's happening here before doing anything else.

Something is still preventing your error messages from making it into the error reports. Can you generate a Debug ID for the download?

uGLJJINKYvnyAGYRcjBj

What do mean exactly with "Debug ID for the download". Should I enable DOL, trigger again a sync and submit it to Zotero Server, which will generate a Debug ID?

dstillman

Yes.

uGLJJINKYvnyAGYRcjBj

Here it is: D208970258.

dstillman

OK, it looks like things are still a mess from the deleted items. Try a Restore from Zotero Server.

uGLJJINKYvnyAGYRcjBj

The restore has been successfully completed! Everything seems to be OK now.

dstillman

Great.

For what it's worth, these sorts of issues with huge initial syncs are part of the reason we're switching to a new sync architecture in Zotero 4.1, so these problems should go away in the not-too-distant future.

uGLJJINKYvnyAGYRcjBj

Seems to be a good idea, indeed. And, yes: my library is huge, as it has grown over a period of more than 20 years (I started with a hypertext-implementation on a Mac, switched later to a self-coded Filemaker data bank, and after that to EndNote). Thank you again for your great help.