What Does the Library Purge Actually Purge ?

mkreuzer

When I sychn, it ask me to resolve over 2000 conflicts regarding the proper location of items. The source of these conflicts are items that others have added to the group library but I have deleted. (I am the owner of the group) Given that these items were deleted, there appears to be no way of resolving these conflicts.

I am wondering whether it could solve this problem by using the purge function that is available in my group Zotero settings. The group from which I deleted all the files still shows 680MB worth of storage even though I deleted them and emptied the trash. So, it appears that I need to use the purge function.

However, here is my big worry. The "Purge Storage" button is followed by the ominous sound message "Purges Files from Personal Library". What does this mean. Not of the group items that I deleted were stored in my personal library. These were all items that others added to the group. So, I am a correct to assume that I will NOT affect my personal library ? What effect will it have on the library of the other group members (who I have since removed from the group as it no longer is active ?)

Any advice ?

dstillman

Don't use the purge option. It's for a very limited use case, and not yours. (It doesn't affect group libraries, and it doesn't affect items, only files.)

You get conflicts if changes are made on two different sides between syncs — so it wouldn't happen just if someone else adds an item and you delete it.

When I sychn, it ask me to resolve over 2000 conflicts regarding the proper location of items.

What do you mean by this?

If you provide a Debug ID for a sync attempt through the appearance of the conflict resolution window, I can take a look at the conflicts you're getting. (You can cancel the CR window after submitting the debug output without resolving the conflict.)

mkreuzer

Here is the Debug ID. D1377109150.

I get a window entitle conflict resolution. It has three panes "Local Object", "Remote Object" and "Merged Object".

It asks me to resolve this apparent location conflict for 2000 items. These are items that I deleted in the group library. Hope this clarifies things.

dstillman

It looks like you may have not synced in a while and made many local changes that conflicted with changes other people had made.

At this point, your best bet is to just resolve all the conflicts. If you want to keep all the changes from one side, you can use the checkbox in the conflict resolution window to do that.

You could also use Restore from Zotero Server to replace your local database with the latest changes from zotero.org, but you'd lose any changes you made locally since your last sync.

The next major version of Zotero will be much better at avoiding unnecessary conflicts, though some are unavoidable if everyone isn't syncing regularly, so we recommend leaving auto-sync enabled and resolving issues as they happen.

dstillman

(To be specific, it doesn't look like you've had a successful upload since June.)

mkreuzer

Thanks. Your suggestion solve the conflict resolution. But now all the old files that I deleted are back in the group libraries.

What would be the procedure to delete files from the group library WITHOUT creating conflicts about the location of files ?

dstillman

I'm still not sure what you mean about "conflicts about the location of files", but if everything is in sync, you can just use Zotero normally, with auto-sync enabled, and you shouldn't get conflicts as long as the syncing is going through.

mkreuzer

Sorry for being not clearer. So let me try another route. I use a group library that I share with students. This allows me to follow what references they collect for their research paper. So, within my library, I create a separate collection for each student where they store their items.
Now the semester is over and I no longer need those student collection in my library. What would I have to do the delete them ? What I have done is to delete where all the items in their collections, then I deleted the collections itself, and then I emptied the trash. My expectation was this this would free up storage space in my group library.
Instead the following happens. The next I synch the library I get Conflict Resolution prompt asking me which version of the deleted items I want to keep. I give me three options the local object, remote object or merged objection. I am not interested in any version since I want the item to disapppear permanently.

Hence my earlier questions of how do I delete items without triggering the Conflict Resoltuion prompt which seems to want me to SAVE rather than delete items.

adamsmith

yeah, Dan was answering that question: If you have a group library that's in sync, when you delete items locally and sync again (ideally via autosync so it's instantaneous), you won't get sync conflicts.

I would also expect that, in the sync conflict window, the local version of the deleted items actually just said "deleted", in which case, even if you do have sync conflicts, you could delete items by picking the local version of the item.