Any way to retrieve my Zotero library if I didn't back it up?

songbird1268

This may be a really dumb question, but is there any way to retrieve my Zotero library? Somehow my 8-year-old managed to erase just about everything on my Mac except, thank goodness, my documents and Microsoft Office. I lost my Zotero and have had to start from scratch with Firefox, iTunes, etc. And, of course, I did NOT back up my Zotero files. I checked the Firefox profiles folder on my computer - it's just gone, poof! Any way at all to retrieve this info? Does Zotero keep any copies of our libraries stored online or anything like that? Any help with this would be greatly appreciated - I'm getting ready to write my Ph.D. dissertation and lost almost all my bibliographic info for it because of this.

joh

you could try doing a spotlight search for the zotero.sqlite database? maybe it has been moved?

rlubensky

I'll just chime in here, in sympathy. I had a motherboard crash and hadn't backed up since June. Like you, I need to write NOW using some key material I uncovered only recently! But unlike you, I have my database still intact on a slave drive in my new PC.

If I try to set it as my new Zotero folder, I get an error. And I can't directly import the sqlite file either.

Suggestions please?

dstillman

rlubensky: Follow the steps in the Advanced Instructions section of the Reporting Bugs page, start a new thread (since this isn't related to the above issue), and let us know what appears in the Error Console.