Folder has disappeared

joannagoven

I have been adding and deleting items in a subfolder to a folder in a group library. Now the folder has disappeared entirely. I have synced, but it does not reappear. I can find the items I know I deleted in the 'trash' file, but there is no sign of all the other items that have disappeared. I had been using Zotero Standalone. I have since downloaded Zotero for Firefox, hoping that might resolve the problem. It hasn't.

dstillman

Do the items still exist in the library root? If so, it's likely that you (or someone else) just accidentally deleted the collection. It looks like five collections were deleted in your group in the last few days.

joannagoven

Thanks, I will check for the items (if I can remember what they all were!) and ask if anyone has been deleting collections.

rhiansalmon

Hi- thanks for helping us understand this. I set up the group "scienceoutreach" that Joanna is referring to and concur that her collection has disappeared completely despite none of us knowingly deleting it.

Some of the papers in those sub-collections are still in the root directory, now in other sub-collections... it looks like the synch process has become confused when different users have logged on (some of those items, for instance, now contain multiple copies of the same PDF).

Can you direct us to any explanation of how synching prioritizes in groups that have several users?

I'm wondering if we'd be safer having multiple group libraries - and each of us only have write access to one, but read access to all. Perhaps you already have some recommendations of best practice in this regard.

Also - is there a way for me to view the histories you refer to so I can maybe see what's happened?

Thanks

adamsmith

sync doesn't prioritize - if two people change an item between syncs the second person to sync gets a sync conflict message with a merge item dialog.
Generally medium sized groups with write access for all members work well. You don't have the database on a shared network drive, do you?

dstillman

rhiansalmon: No full sync history is available, though you can see who added recent items on the group entry page on zotero.org. (Additional info of this sort is planned.) From internal logs I can tell you that it looks like you deleted 4 of the 5 deleted collections in this group the night of January 27th (Eastern U.S. time). The other collection was deleted by joannagoven on the 29th.

Collections don't end up in the trash, so if a collection has focus and you press Delete and Return (thinking an item has focus), it's possible to delete them accidentally. Hopefully we can offer some form of undo for that at some point.

rhiansalmon

Thanks for your help - we'll keep working at it then: good to know we haven't set up our preferences or permissions naively. Not sure what you mean by "focus" but we'll be careful with going anywhere near the delete button in future. I did try and delete several of the [identical] PDFs that were attached to a given item only for multiple PDFs to appear again (attached to the same item) after a synch... perhaps that should become the subject of a different thread though, or maybe all these things are related?