Zotero stopped working

I've been using Zotero for months and it's been fine. Today it started pretending to work, but the items never showed up in the application. Not in Firefox. Not in Chrome. Not as a standalone. I tried reinstalling all of them. No difference. There's no way to get anything into my library.
  • Could you give us an exact rundown of what's happening? This isn't easy to follow.
    Best as I can make out, you save an item via the Save to Zotero icon? Zotero says it's saving and displays the title of the item you're saving?

    And then you check in Standalone and it's not there? Correct so far?

    How about when you check online, i.e. here on zotero.org? And how about when you close down Standalone and check in the Firefox add-on (i.e. click on the "Z" icon to open the Zotero pane)?

    See if those questions make sense or otherwise provide as much detail as you can (and don't bother reinstalling anything; that pretty much never helps).
  • Correct, but it's not only not in the standalone, it also doesn't go into Firefox or online. It seems to save but doesn't—anywhere.
  • edited August 24, 2016
    Where are you saving from? And what exactly does Zotero say?

    (and please, we really do need as much detail as you can. Describe exactly what you're doing and what you're saying).
  • I'm saving from Gale via my school library's offsite login. It says it's saving and give me the title in the box, but doesn't give me the subtitles (like full.pdf, or whatever).
  • THank you for your help.
  • http://go.galegroup.com.pgi.idm.oclc.org/ps/retrieve.do?sort=RELEVANCE&inPS=true&prodId=GVRL&userGroupName=carp39441&tabID=T003&searchId=R2&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&contentSegment=&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=1&contentSet=GALE%7CCX2444500140&&docId=GALE|CX2444500140&docType=GALE
  • So what you're describing is incredibly odd -- if you're describing it correctly I don't think it has ever happened to anyone using Zotero. The title of an item appears in the pop up when Zotero saves it to a database, so it's almost certainly getting saved somewhere (and if it isn't we'd still need to have those details to make any sense of what's going on).

    I really need you to walk us very slowly and precisely through every step you're taking. What Zotero versions you have installed. What browser you're using when you save. What exactly the pop up from Zotero says. How you're checking that he item isn't getting saved. Takes some time to write this up thoroughly -- it'll save us a bunch of goign back and forth here and so save you time in the end.
  • How can I send you a video?
  • You can upload it wherever you like (Dropbox, youtube, any other free site) and link to it from here.
  • http://mythictruths.com/Zotero.mp4
  • yeah, that never shows the title of the item it's saving, it just shows the collection it's trying to save to and then fails silently.
    That's almost certainly a problem specific to trying to save from Gale (which I can replicate).

    You could try http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24297125 for good measure -- I'd be pretty sure that'll work (as will almost all other sites).

    I'll try to get to fixing the Gale translator, but I have a very limited set of pages to test and they changed the site quite a bit, so it'll take a little.
  • Zotero has not worked for Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL) for us (a private university), for months now. This is a major problem, because our students rely on GVRL for their papers. The symptom we see is that when we are on a GVRL article, and click on the "Z" icon (this is in Firefox), the small window will appear in the lower left corner saying it is saving to Zotero, but the title never shows up in the small window, and the article is never saved to Zotero. It would be a major victory if we could get this working again!
  • Replace "lower left" with "lower right" (I get confused!)
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