synchronization problem

raffam

Today I was making modifications to my library, classifying the items in new collection
When I clicked to sync the library, a lot of merge conflicts happened. It said that my files were modified both locally and remotely. The latter is not possible, although my files are in a group, no one other than me have write access to it

Moreover, after the sync, the files in the local library ("My Library") that I have long deleted were resuscitated

I have deleted them again and now I see icons with no metadata on them. Here is a screenshot: https://ibb.co/gM2khk

I am using the stable version because I don't want to have problems. I have strict deadlines. What happened?

My files in the group ("rtesi") seems to be all in their place, but I am not sure

EDIT: the situation in the screenshot persist even after sync completes successfully. Zotero is convinced I have added lot of entries with no metadata at all on them

dstillman

I can't tell you where those items with only an Extra field came from — that's not something anyone else has reported as far as I know.

In any case, there are a few rare situations where 4.0 can reset itself and show some erroneous conflicts. The upcoming Zotero 5.0 is much better at avoiding those.

raffam

I have the Google Scholar plugin which put citations in the "Extra" field. But it does not create empty entries

Also can you explain the merge conflicts? Noone could have modified the online version

I think at a certain point a sync failed, and Zotero stayed in a sort of middle messed up state, instead of reverting to the previous valid state

dstillman

It's not really worth spending time on — the sync architecture in 5.0 is entirely different and should avoid situations like this.