Conducting a systematic review, issues with groups and syncing

jcornacc

I’m conducting a systematic literature review using Zotero to retrieve and store articles. My two research assistants individually (they each have their own shared group with me) just went through the process of removing duplicates, but it won’t sink to my Zotero account. When they tried to manually sync (clicking the green circle arrow button), they both got the message: “The following item has been changed in multiple locations. Choose the version you would like to keep and then click next.” Three versions then show: local object (which says deleted); remote object (listing an article’s information); and merged object (also listing the same article’s information). The options at the bottom say ‘Next’ (for 1 of 5837 items) or ‘Cancel Sync.’ My other RA got the same message, but only for 7 items. How do I go about resolving this issue, hopefully without losing data? They both just canceled sync until I found a resolution.

adamsmith

The RA with the 7 messages should just go through them and pick the one that's right. With the 6000 conflict messages though, especially if the local copy is marked as deleted, that strongly suggests a different time setting on that RAs machine. Check that their system time is accurate.

jcornacc

Thanks for your quick reply!

Because I haven't seen this error message (and I'm quite new to Zotero), can you explain how the RA with 7 messages goes through to pick the correct one?

And for the second RA, do you mean system time on her computer? This RA also just told me that she "lost everything" when working earlier this week, so she had to go back and re-search/upload everything. Not sure if this is useful information...

adamsmith

This is just a standard merge conflict message. It's not actually an error message, it just means that the same item has been modified in two different locations so Zotero doesn't automatically know what to do.

You just click on the version that you want (probably the local version, i.e. deleting the item) and click "Next" in the error message.

And yes, I do mean the system time on her computer. I think that's particularly likely if she's using Windows.