Multiple copies of documents and attachments missing (after sync)

obufnate · November 25, 2014

Dear Zotero community,
I just ran a sync of my Zotero library and now have almost 3 copies of every source and no longer have the attachment accessible for about 95% of these sources. I do have a backup copy of my library saved on an external hard drive but it is about 3 months old (and I have updated my library since then). Any advice on how to resolve these challenges?

dstillman · November 25, 2014

So first, the only time you can ever get multiple copies of something is if you create them independently, either by importing them from a file (RDF, RIS, BibTeX) or dragging them into the same library from a group library on different computers between syncs. The former includes exporting and reimporting the same file, on the same or different computers. Since you're not in any groups, I'm guessing you used export/import incorrectly. (It's rarely actually necessary or correct to use export.)

For the attachment issue, attachments will never go missing on their own on the same computer. Most likely that they simply didn't sync from one of the computers. See https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/files_not_syncing for details. It's also possible that there was a problem importing the files during one of the (possibly several) imports you did.