doubling of all references along with unwanted syncing

lieutaud

Hello,
functionning with zotero/firefox last update, using word10, and having a storage almost saturated, here is what happened, without error ID.
all of a sudden today, my zotero on firefox went into a syncing I didn't ask for, and then all my references were doubled in my zotero file. Plus, the classification into folders was basically emptied. Since then, many infos desappeared from my zotero (page numbers in perticular), and although I fused all the double documents, citations in the text still consider each reference as double, placing a "a" in the text after each author-date reference cited.

I'm about to finish my PhD dissertation and I must admit that this bug is arriving at the worst moment ever (but isn't it the function of bugs to be stressfull ?). Would anyone be so kind to give me some help on this matter ?
Thank you very very much
Anne

adamsmith

To be honest, this is much more likely to occur because of human error than because of a bug.
Pragmatically, what I'd try to do is to restore from a recent back-up before this happened.
https://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data#restoring_your_zotero_library_from_a_backup
Make sure to have sync turned off while you do that and once you're done, use "Restore to Server" from Sync-->Reset tab in the Zotero preference.

My best guess of what happened is that you used export/import on your library at some point, but it's hard to say.

dstillman

Yes, there's no way this can occur during syncing. The only way this can happen is if you use export/import improperly.

lieutaud

Thank you very much
I followed your suggestions, but there is still a problem of double items somewhere. Not anymore in the zotero file, viewed on firefox. But in word10, the ressent insertions of authors are still labled with an a (same author old citation) and with b (new ones of the same author).
I tried to erase all citations of one of those authors, but the bibliography re-inserted still lists it.
I then tried to erase manually the author reference from zotero on firefox, and still, the bibliography re-inserted still lists it ...

It is possible that I wrongly used import/export as a restoring device on standalone, some weeks ago. I have deleted it since then.

Can you still help me on this ?
Thank you so much

adamsmith

The reference is stored in the document - you'll probably have to replace each reference with the right one from your library. As you do that - using the quick format citation bar (the one with the red rim around it) make sure that the citation you select is listed under "My Libray" - not under "Cited"

lieutaud

Thank you, that's what I did. no more "a"'s or "b"'s. But I actually did cut and paste as much as possible, because the quickbar is extreeeemly slow.

can you explain why selecting one list instead of the other would generate a different output in the text ?

adamsmith

Because from Zotero's perspective you had two different items: the old one and the new one. The old one was still stored with the reference in the document - Zotero doesn't know they're the same and at that point there is no way to let it know that (since the only place that item exists is in the document you can't merge anymore).