"attached file could not be found" problem

battles_atlas

I've read several of these threads but none seem to cover this: as of today I've noticed that trying to open a bunch of my pdfs - either the locally stored one or the linked one - come up with this error message. Even if I click on Locate and go to the locally hosted file and open it, nothing happens, and the same message appears if I try again. The pdf itself opens fine if opened directly. Whats going on?

Debug ID is D2018357880.

dstillman

1) Upgrade to Zotero 4.0.16. You're still on 4.0.12.

2) Provide a Debug ID for an attempt to open the file.

3) Note that if these are locally stored files, Zotero will put you in the right eight-character directory within 'storage' automatically if it exists. You should never navigate to another directory for a stored file, and it won't work if you do. (Technically it shouldn't even let you, but there's not a great way to do that.)

battles_atlas

Updated, problem remains. The Debug ID is D1238458155

battles_atlas

Bump

dstillman

Are you sure you actually tried to open the file during that debubg output? That looks like just selecting it, not trying to open the attachment and trigger the error message.

battles_atlas

The log is of me clicking a pdf link, getting the Can't find error message, and then clicking Locate, at which point I get Zotero/Storage open, and a whole bunch of randomly named folders that mean nothing to me.

Most of my pdf's are stored separately, and Zotero was told to link to them them rather than save a copy. That used to be fine, but it now seems to be looking for them in Storage/ and not finding them, and even I if navigate to where they actually are it still wont open them.

battles_atlas

Just in case, here is another attempt: The Debug ID is D169168588.

dstillman

OK, that time was correct.

The file you clicked on was not a linked file.

Attachment file 'C:\Users\[...]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[...].default\zotero\storage\CUZIG888\[...].PDF' not found

If there's no PDF in that directory, it's possible it hasn't synced from another computer (or it did and you deleted or something else deleted it on disk without updating the item).

https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/files_not_syncing

dstillman

And actually, it looks like you got at least a couple file sync errors in that debug output. If you're still getting one, that would likely be the problem.

battles_atlas

Ok that helped a little - I've checked and somehow it seems all my pdfs that zotero stored from more than about 18 months ago have disappeared. Files that zotero linked to elsewhere on my machine are fine.

I'm not clear though what I can do to fix it. Presumably I can restore them from zotero cloud storage? If so, how?

I don't understand the file sync issue either - that page you linked to just talks about accessing the file on a different machine, but I've only ever used one machine for zotero.

dstillman

I've checked and somehow it seems all my pdfs that zotero stored from more than about 18 months ago have disappeared.

Did you migrate your Zotero files from another computer at any point? Do you have Zotero set to use a custom Zotero data directory? There's not really any way for Zotero to have deleted your files, so either something else deleted them or, probably more likely, you're actually using a different data directory than when you saved those files. See the linked page and check whether there might be multiple Zotero data directories on your computer.

(And sync would be relevant because if you switched Zotero to a different data directory without copying the old data directory, Zotero would pull down your synced data from the server, making it look like you were still using the same data directory, but if there was a file sync error it wouldn't pull down the attached files.)

battles_atlas

I'm at a loss then. I'm sure if this problem had happened 18months ago I would have noticed earlier, so it must have been more recent. I certainly didnt delete anything personally, and havent migrated the files at any point in that time. There aren't multiple zotero directories on my machine, and I'm using the standard zotero location.

Edit: it seems I do have all/most of the pdfs still, but as I noticed originally, they are all pdfs that I have manually stored elsewhere on my computer. When creating the entries in Zotero I now tell Zotero to link to that file (these links all work), but I used to have a habit of telling it to create a Stored Copy. I think it's these files that are the problem - it seems it's all these Stored Copys that are AWOL. So I have the files elsewhere, but Zotero is looking for its own copy and not finding it.

Whether or not that helps at all with a solution I don't know. Would I have to go back and manually relink all these files individually?

dstillman

I can't tell you what happened, just that there's not really any way in Zotero for files to be deleted without their associated attachment items, so it's more likely that this somehow isn't your original data directory.

In any case, if these are stored attachments and the folders aren't there, you'd have to recreate the attachments, yes. If you have backups of your hard drive you could obviously look for the missing folders (e.g., storage/CUZIG888) in there — simply copying those into 'storage' would also do the trick.