Upgrade StorageZotero deleting items
I have noticed that some of my collections have become quite sparce. I haven't looked at the items in a couple of months, but now that I return to the collection there are only a couple of items in it. I'm not sure what's going on here. I did not delete any items from the collection, and yet they are gone from the entire library. Same thing happens sometimes when I go back to check references for a manuscript that I wrote a couple of months ago. I find some references have been deleted from the entire library. I sometimes will merge duplicates, but that shouldn't remove them from the whole library or any folder. I checked the trash but wasn't able to find any of the items there. I have enough storage on the zotero website and automatic syncing. Has anyone had this problem?
Generally speaking, of course, Zotero doesn't just delete items. It can't. So something else is going on.
We'd then need you to hit alt+F9 in Word (alt+FN+F9 on Mac), which will display field codes (lots of code-looking stuff) for all citations. Just copy the entire field code for the item in question here.
I really need to keep my files intact in order to be an effective researcher! It's really frustrating chasing down articles that I should already have in my library. I was using Zotero on two computer and wonder if that's the problem. Is this possible? Would it be possible to set up the ability to turn syncing on/off on a particular machine?
The best protection is to have longterm, incremental backups. You want a setup along the lines of Mac's time machine: Keep daily backups for a months, monthly backup for a year, and yearly backups forever (or something along those lines). That should extend to all your important files and include Zotero. Any decent backup software can do this automatically and in the background.
If you're using multiple computers, we strongly discourage turning off automatic syncing. The only real answer here is to make sure that you don't delete items you want to keep and that if you're using Zotero on a public/shared computer you don't leave your sync credentials in the preferences. [Edit: Yes, and to use an automated backup system, as adamsmith says, to be able to recover from accidental mistakes like this.]
Merging the data isn't entirely trivial, since the delete log is saved and I can't think of a way to do so that wouldn't break links to Word documents for either the old or the new items.
What I'd suggest doing is to export all items added to your library after the delete occurred. Then restore from a pre-delete back-up following these instructions:
https://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data#restoring_your_zotero_library_from_a_backup_and_overwriting_synced_changes
Then re-import the exported items. They will no longer connect to the corresponding citations in Word, though.
@Dan -- I'm not overlooking an option here, am I?
You only use the link between Word document and Zotero items. They'll still cite OK, they just won't be affected by any edits you make in Zotero, so this might not be so horrible.