PDFs keep disappearing from user's library

bhinrichs

One the members of my group keeps losing the ability to open the pdfs in the group folder.

I removed her from the group and added her back in, made sure her sync was up to date, and that fixed the problem temporarily, but then it started happening again.

She is a member of several groups, but only one of the group libraries she is in is having this problem.

She is able to see the group folder and all the files listed in the library. But when
she clicks on the library item, instead of opening the pdf like usual, it comes up with a pop up that says "The attached file could not be found. It may have been moved or deleted outside of Zotero."

The same file opens just fine for me, but I am the admin of the group, so not sure if that makes a difference. None of the other group members have reported any problems yet.

adamsmith

And you are positive she was able to open the same PDFs on the same computer previously?

dstillman

This is almost certainly just Files Not Syncing. Zotero never removes attached files without removing the items in Zotero — there's no code to do so — so either they were never synced to that computer or something else on the system is removing the files.

The easiest option is probably for her just to switch to downloading group files "as needed" in the Sync preferences.

bhinrichs

She was using the same computer the whole time. It happened a few days ago, but when I removed her from the group and put her back in, it resolved.
She was accessing files fine in the morning, and when she went back to do more work in the afternoon she got the error message.
To my knowledge there were no changes to her system in that time. It just stopped working.
I will try changing her Sync preferences, thanks for the suggestion.

bhinrichs

Now I have another user in the group with the same problem. There are 7 people total in the group, the other five are working fine.

adamsmith

How are their computers set up? Networked drives, roaming profiles, anything of that sort? As Dan says, Zotero literally can't remove files that haven't been explicitly deleted, so there may be something going on with the way the databases and stored files are handled locally.

bhinrichs

I'm not an IT person, so at a bit of a loss as to what to look for that might be causing the problems.

They said they are still able to access the articles through the website, but not through the firefox zotero pane

adamsmith

are these their personal computers or are those office/company machines?

Do find out if they have Zotero Standalone installed in addition to Zotero for Firefox.

dstillman

Also, are all files in the library missing (i.e., empty blue circles for all items in the middle pane), or only some? When people report this, it's almost always just that they've encountered a specific file that hasn't (ever) synced, often accompanied by a sync error, and not that the same file is present one moment and missing the next, which would point to a problem outside of Zotero.

bhinrichs

one is on a personal computer, one is an office computer.

one of them is only a member of one group, and all of her files unopenable. the files were all listed and she could see the parent item and the pdf listed in the folder, she just couldn't open them.

I removed her from the group, added her back in, and had her re-sync and her files are working (for now at least! fingers crossed!).

the other is a member of several groups, and the pdfs in other groups were working, but for this one group she wasn't able to open any of the files in just that group.

I am looking into what other things they may be running (some application common to both that may be mucking up the works).

adamsmith

So to be clear:
Just because you see an attachment listed in Zotero, it doesn't mean the PDF is there. Zotero syncs the metadata -- including whether an item has an attachment -- prior to and separately from the actual files.

So the crucial question to start with is really whether there are PDFs that the same user has been able to open on the same computer in the past but cannot open anymore and I'm still not clear on if that's the case or not.

Have you tried telling them to switch sync to "As needed" in the Sync tab of the Zotero preferences?

bhinrichs

She says she was able to open all the pdfs in the group in the morning, and those same pdfs would not open on the same computer in the afternoon.

I am having her switch to the as needed sync now.

Thank you for all your help in getting to the bottom of this. I really appreciate it.