Where's the Zotero Profile Directory Gone

blackhill45123

Hi,

I'm using the 5.0 beta. I just checked preferences/advanced/files and folders. There appears to be no Firefox profile directory now for storage. Is this correct?

Instead, my default storage location option is listed as /Users/username/Zotero.

But this is backup folder I've created from some months back. And it's a few months out of date.

Where has the default storage folder gone or where is now located?

I'm asking this because I temporarily set up a Zotero Storage folder on my desktop to give myself an empty database to play around with an import/export option, but I can't find my profile directory to revert back to my original database. It just reverts me back to the above /Users/username/Zotero.

When I navigate manually to Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles there's nothing there as such. I just have a folder called 2tlb4hrz.default in the Firefox Profile directory.

dstillman

First, the profile directory is different from Zotero data directory. 2tlb4hrz.default is your Firefox profile directory.

The Zotero data directory used to be in a 'zotero' subfolder of the profile directory by default. In 5.0 it's now in /Users/username/Zotero (a.k.a. ~/Zotero), and a directory in the old location is automatically migrated when you upgrade on macOS and Linux as long as there's not already a ~/Zotero directory.

If you previously created a ~/Zotero directory manually and it's a valid Zotero data directory, Zotero 5.0 will detect and use that automatically if it was using the default location within either the Firefox or Zotero Standalone profile directory. If it was set to use a custom data directory location, it wouldn't use ~/Zotero automatically.

So, to be clear, this would only be a problem if 1) you had a directory at ~/Zotero that you created yourself, 2) it was a valid Zotero data directory, and 3) you were using the default data directory location rather than that directory. That'd be a very unlikely situation, but maybe that's what you're seeing? If so, you'd find your previous data directory in the 'zotero' subdirectory of either your Firefox profile directory or, if you originally used Zotero Standalone, the Zotero Standalone profile directory.

blackhill45123

Thanks that makes sense.

One follow up related question. When I tested the 'empty' Zotero directory that I created on my desktop I forgot to turn off sync. This meant that Zotero synced the RIS import I put into this empty directory, and now all my data is merged and mixed up on the server.

I wasn't too worried as I still have the original Zotero directory in /Zotero. The plan was to point Zotero back to this directory, then purge / reset the server with upload from local storage. I've done this many times in the past.

However, I've just noticed that the options have changed in Preferences / Sync / Reset.

Now I'm given the option to 'Full Sync' merge local data from server, ignoring sync history.

I don't want to merge my data. I want to remove everything off the server, then upload the the local Zotero directory, effectively starting a clean slate.

How do I now do this?

dstillman

The Restore to/from Zotero Server options aren't currently available in 5.0. They'll probably be returning, but they're also generally overkill and can cause more problems than they're worth. In this case you can likely remove the unwanted items just by sorting by Date Added and deleting the imported items (which should all have the same date) or by right-clicking on the import collection and choosing "Delete Collection and Items…".