No sync button in Standalone

kevinwilson

Hello,
I was wondering whether you can help. I'm asking on behalf of a student who I've taught Zotero to. She seems unable to sync between Zotero in Firefox and Zotero Standalone. She is logged into both using the same account in the Preferences menu. In Zotero Standalone, she doesn't even have a sync button at all. The "locate" button is the last there is in the menus at the top of the page. When she clicks sync in Zotero in Firefox, then nothing happens. Does anyone know how this has happened and why she has no sync option in Standalone, and what can be done?

Many thanks
Kevin

adamsmith

There's no obvious reason. There is no (functioning) Standalone version without sync button. You have seen this? The Sync button would be to the _left_ right of locate, so make sure it's not just getting overlooked. Also, make sure it's not getting pushed out because the window is too small

edit: fixed incorrect left--> right

dstillman

(Sync is to the right of Locate, not left.) But yes, most likely the window is just sized too small.

kevinwilson

Thanks guy, here's a screenshot. Do you think the programme just needs to be maximised?

http://imgur.com/kboPktY

Kevin

adamsmith

Hard to say -- it doesn't look that crammed, but that'd be the first thing to try, yes.

dstillman

No, that's off — you can see that the text in the right-hand pane is way over to the right instead of being centered. The right-hand pane needs to be shrunk way down by dragging the separator on the left-hand side of the pane to the right, and the window itself should be made wider.

kevinwilson

Thanks all,

That has resolved the problem, thanks!

There's another issue though. The student is signed into both Zotero for Firefox and Zotero Standalone with the same log-in (I've seen her enter this) and the two libraries don't sync up. She's received alert messages I've never seen before. Can anyone help with the best course of action?

http://i.imgur.com/lLtevEm.png

http://i.imgur.com/0DVdQBi.png

http://i.imgur.com/VX7CLHR.png

All she needs is for her two libraries to sync. I can't imagine what's gone wrong to cause this, and as it's not something I've seen before, I'm not sure what the answer is.

adamsmith

It's not something gone wrong. If the same item gets modified in two location, Zotero offers a merge dialog during sync. That's what you're seeing here. It's only six items, so she just has to click on the version she wants to keep, click next and thus go through this.

That said, if Standalone and the Firefox add-on are on the same computer, she shouldn't be using Sync to connect them. They should just be pointed to the same data directory.
https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/sharing_data_directory

kevinwilson

Hi Adam,

Thanks. With the conflict resolution messages, I said yes to keeping the local object (this had her notes in). When she logged out of Zotero and then back in, the same conflict resolution message appeared. We tried a few times. Do we need to manually share the data directory as your link suggests? When she installed both Standalone and on Firefox, she must've said no to the message asking to share the data directory.

Because it's not my computer and not my Zotero library, I'm a little hesitant at making changes when I'm not 100% sure what the outcome will be or indeed whether I'll be doing the right thing.

Is it even a big deal to not change anything?

Many thanks
Kevin

DWL-SDCA

By selecting Local Object you haven't resolved the conflict (the stars in the title of your first example).

This conflict pattern will continue until both the standalone and Firefox versions use the same data directory.

Is it even a big deal...? Yes! If your student cites references from both database versions in the same manuscript, things can get really muddled. That is because there are duplicates and near duplicates.

Back-up both versions of the database on an external drive and follow the instructions for sharing a single data directory.

The data directory should _not_ be backed-uo to or housed on a service such as Dropbox, etc.

adamsmith

No, I think DWL is a bit off here.

The issue of citing from two databases isn't a problem: they are, after all, going to be synced.

As for the sync conflicts, if you do want to resolve them, see
https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/repeated_conflicts (you can select the local version -- that's fine and you seem to do this exactly right)

As for sharing the data directory, it's more the wastefulness of having the exact same database and set of attachments twice on your computer, having to deal with sync conflicts etc. I'd very strongly recommend making that change for simple ease of use and resource conservation.