Duplicates in web interface, but not in local library despite successful sync

Hi,

I am about to switch from Mendeley to Zotero - first of all, thanks for providing the world with this amazing open-source tool!

That being said, I have a little problem. I did import the Mendeley library via Bibtex and at some point I noticed that some references were missing because the were still marked as "under review" in Mendeley. So, I deleted the references in my local Zotero client (Mac standalone version) and imported the Mendeley database again (~1000 references, some with pdfs).
Syncing went smoothly (good job with the great upload speed!) and locally everything looked fine.

Then, however, I looked into the Zotero web interface and, online, essentially all references were duplicated (~2000 entries). At the same time, I can successfully sync from my Mac client and do not get any of the duplicates locally.

Is this expected behavior?
Since the syncs of the duplicates occurred at different times, I could sort by date and go through the online library, deleting the duplicates. But this will take some time.. and the problem should not occur in the first place, right?

Best,
Leopold
  • Ok, so I guess a "Restore to Zotero Server" would be a convenient solution to my problem.
    Still I am puzzled as to how it is possible that my local and online library have different contents after a successful sync.
  • No reason that should happen if syncs are really going through. It looks like you did a reset, though, so I'm not able to look at it now. "Restore to Zotero Server" should almost never be necessary or used, for what that's worth.
  • Dear Dan,

    thanks for your comment. I am quite sure the syncs were going through (as reported by the local client via mouse-over over the green arrow) . Also, there was actually never a time when I locally had ~2000 items, so I would guess there has been some rare glitch in the sync process.

    I now indeed went for the restore because I was worried that at some point I might get these duplicates back into my local database.

    Anyhow, good to know that this is not a frequent problem. If it ever happens again, I will let you know.
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