Zotero not syncing

deOliveira-R

Hi,

My Zotero is not syncing. I have a particularly large library and apparently Zotero is having problems with it (I'm not sure if that is the reason, but could be).

Can someone help me to debug this issue?

Thanks,
Rodrigo

DWL-SDCA

You need to describe your problem with more detail.

When you click the sync icon, what happens? Does the green arrow rotate? Do you see a red exclamation mark. If you do see the ! what is the exact error message?

Is this the first time you have attempted to sync this database? Have you synced this database before but you were using a different computer?

Even after answering my questions, someone is likely to ask you additional questions.

adamsmith

But if this is a large library and you just see the round arrow rotating for hours, give it time. Sync is currently a bit slower prior to the move to Zotero 5.0, so large syncs have on occasion taken multiple hours.

deOliveira-R

That is how it is to be a beginner... We don't even know the questions that need to be asked. Anyway.

I synced the library into this computer. This worked. Then I added some material to the library and asked for it to be synced so that I could see the changes on my devices. The sync button rotates normally for about a minute then stops saying that sync was completed on the last X seconds. No exclamation mark. However these changes do not appear in my Zotero account online, neither on my devices (naturally).

dstillman

Start here: Changes Not Syncing

deOliveira-R

I went through that page.

The computer I'm sitting in front of seems to not sync its data to the server properly. There is data on it that is not appearing on the library online.

Anyway, I ended up restoring the zotero library from this computer that had everything but was not syncing back and it seems to be ok.

Thanks guys.

deOliveira-R

Apparently it was ok for a short time then I added some new things to the library. This newly added data don't sync back properly to Zotero servers. Some of it does, but some of it doesn't!

Therefore sync is only partially working and not reliable

The interesting part is that the FILES do sync properly with webdav server. If I ask to show file, get its code and search for this code inside the webdav/zotero, I do find it.

So I'm having problems only with syncing data, not files.

Its a library with more than 4500 files in 8.1 GB. It's big but I assume it shouldn't be an issue since Zotero sells storage for "unlimited storage" (and I assume whoever needs that, probably has more files than me).

adamsmith

and you've double-checked that this is all syncing with the same account?
And how exactly are you checking for items online?

This sounds very odd -- file sync happens after metadata sync is complete (Zotero doesn't do partial data syncs in version 4), so a situation where files sync and data doesn't should be technically impossible, and I have never seen this before. So by far the most likely scenario is either a display issue online or you looking in the wrong place and we'd want to be absolutely sure that's not the case here.

If you're positive, could we get a couple of those item codes you looked up?

deOliveira-R

Yes, I've double checked. Indeed, if it wasn't syncing with the same account it wouldn't work partially and then break, it would simply not work.

For example, collection NED_v301 does not appear on Zotero online at all. It is inside Journal -> Nuclear Engineering and Design -> NED_v301

Codes:
WG6MF5Z5
8EEJESQ9
8XX4TAGM
JP3B5PCM

Are all supposed to be inside collection NED_v301.

These other collections appear, but as empty collections (which they are not):

Collection | Item sample

NED_v307 | CTM84ZNS
NED_v308 | 9FNHPNHQ
NED_v309 | CC3A7RAI
NED_v314 | CE7X6KXC
NED_v315 | V9NAUM54

After deeper investigation, the items are in the Library but not in their Collections (and of course, collection NED_v301 simply doesn't appear as existent at all). Therefore it seems to be related to sync of data regarding Collections (if it exists or not, what items are inside, etc) specifically.

All of this also reflect on PaperShip on my iPad. Just saying.

Naturally I will cooperate. I'd be happy to give any more data necessary to sort these things.

adamsmith

Are you in Zotero Standalone or the Firefox add-on? And which Zotero version exactly are you using (check under about Zotero)

deOliveira-R

Zotero Standalone version 4.0.29.17 on Windows at work (which I reckon should be the latest unless something was released between yesterday and today!).

A different version is at home on Mac OS (but also the latest). I didn't notice problems there. I did the original upload of more than 4000 files from the Mac but all of them showed ok on PaperShip and latter at work. Then at work I started to add more Collections and populate these collections with items and that is when it started to go wrong.

dstillman

Can you provide a Debug ID for creating a new empty item inside the NED_v301 collection and then syncing once?

deOliveira-R

Debug ID number D531840693. It's a hefty 7000 lines apparently...

I created an empty item inside NEDv_v301, gave it the title of "Test Item" because I thought it would be easier to filter it, then I synced it.

Edit: Ok, so now I went to the online library and interestingly the collection NED_v301 magically appeared with the "Test Item" created.

The other collections (NED_v307, 308, 309 and 315) that were appearing as empty continue empty online. With the exception of NED_v314, which items appeared online magically.

dstillman

OK, we haven't seen this before, but seems like you may have hit a sync bug in 4.0 — possibly an issue when there are a large number of collections. You should be able to fix it by creating (and then deleting, if you like) an item in each of those collections — in 4.0, adding an item to a collection causes the collection to be reuploaded. The upcoming Zotero 5.0 has an entirely new sync architecture, so there's no use debugging this in 4.0.

adamsmith

(alternatively you could just switch to the 5.0 beta version, which is quite stable: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/59829/zotero-5-0-beta/p1 )

deOliveira-R

Well, I don't mind being a test subject. I guess running version 5 and seeing if I bump into these problems gives you valuable feedback as well.

Will it work fine with PaperShip? I use it on my iPad to read my library on the go. I expect once I upgrade Zotero, the database upgrades in a way that there is no going back unless I restart everything from a backup.

Anthony J. Langlois

Zotero 5 will not work with Papership. As I have just discovered. This is really bad. I wish Zotero would take seriously the need for a good tablet app. For the moment I will stay with zotero 4.

adamsmith

Zotero 4 vs. 5 shouldn't make any difference at all for Papership. All mobile apps sync with the Zotero server, and that's the same for Zotero 4 and 5.

Edit: I see the other thread -- that refers to WebDAV only, though. With the Zotero server, I'm pretty sure Zotero will still work.

Anthony J. Langlois

I think you are wrong about this, unfortunately. Papership needs a lastsync.txt file to work. Zotero 5 does not create this anymore, unlike 4.

See here:
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/67527/lastsync-txt-not-created#latest

bwiernik

@Anthony%20J.%20Langlois Please don’t post to many threads like this. PaperShip’s syncing is broken, but this has nothing to do with Zotero 5.