Upgraded Standalone and now Zotero won't work in Firefox

newswatcher

I made the big mistake of updating Zotero Standalone which told me the directory was in the wrong place. I couldn't find it and now I can't see the Zotero "Z" in Firefox top menu, just a green leaf looking thing and can't save pages. What to do?

dstillman

Zotero Standalone which told me the directory was in the wrong place

Do you remember anything more about what the message said?

What happens now when you open Zotero?

dstillman

For Firefox, I'm not quite sure what you mean, but if you upgraded to Zotero 5.0 you need to install the Zotero Connector for Firefox from the download page.

dstillman

When you upgrade to Zotero 5.0, Zotero should migrate your data directory from inside the Firefox profile directory or Zotero profile directory (depending on whether you used Zotero for Firefox or Zotero Standalone first) to "Zotero" in your home/user directory. If that didn't happen for some reason, your data is still perfectly safe and we can help you find the old data directory, but we'd want to try to replicate the error first so we can figure out what happened.

newswatcher

The message said something like your directory was in user/.../mozilla/ directory and not in the correct zotero directory. However, the standalone is fine with all library items correct. But the Zotero "Z" and save feature won't show in FireFox top menu, just a green leaf icon and I can't save pages anymore or look-up older pages so the standalone is useless now. There is no way to migrate from FF to the standalone as before. Shouldn't have updated! Messed up FF save feature.

newswatcher

There is no "Click on the Zotero icon in the Firefox toolbar" though I've reinstalled the Connector numerous times.

newswatcher

I should say there is no Zotero "Z" icon in the toolbar...

dstillman

Note that there's no longer a Z button in Firefox, just a save button, but you can definitely still save to Zotero, and the standalone app works just as before. See A Unified Zotero Experience for an explanation.

On, say, this page, you should see a blue page icon, and if you hover over it it should say "Save to Zotero (Embedded Metadata)".

newswatcher

I see no hovering blue page icon on this page.

dstillman

Can you take a screenshot of your Firefox toolbar, upload it somewhere (e.g., Dropbox, imgur), and post a link here?

newswatcher

I click the green icon in the toolbar and it does nothing...

newswatcher

OK.

dstillman

I don't know what green icon you're referring to, so a screenshot would really be helpful.

dstillman

You're just looking for something like in the screenshot here:

https://www.zotero.org/support/quick_start_guide#translators

A "green leaf icon" sounds like some other Firefox extension.

newswatcher

http://i.imgur.com/D0cuIoS.jpg

dstillman

OK, that's a plugin icon. Is there some reason you think that's related to Zotero? What does it say when you hover over it? What version of Firefox is this?

newswatcher

Well, yeah, because it's the icon that says "Zotero" in addons. It says nothing when I hover over it. I'm using FF 42 because I would lose numerous addons I need such as CoolViews etc.

newswatcher

Take that back, when I hover over the green icon it says save to "Zotero" but I see no action taking place.

dstillman

OK, that's important information. Firefox 42 is very old, insecure, and unsupported by both Mozilla and us. You should be running either Firefox 52 ESR or the current version of Firefox, 54, and the Zotero Connector requires one of those. Note that, if your concern is legacy extensions, they all still work in Firefox 52 ESR, which is supported through mid-2018. If the concern is extensions that haven't been signed, you can run an unbranded build of Firefox and disable add-on signature checking.

newswatcher

http://i.imgur.com/DQNq6yC.jpg

newswatcher

Well, Zotero was working fine with v.42 before I upgraded the standalone. I don't want to upgrade FireFox for the reason above. So I guess it's useless for me and I used it a LOT (saving articles and purchase pages which I can't do now all because I upgraded the darn app on desktop).

dstillman

But as I said, there's no reason to be running Firefox 42. The changes that affect extension compatibility are all in later versions, which also support the new WebExtensions architecture that the Zotero Connector requires.

newswatcher

Well, I just "downgrade" the standalone from 5 to 4 and it won't even open now, so guess I'm screwed...lost all that data.

dstillman

https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/newer_db_version

newswatcher

Well, now v5 can't even find my data...

http://i.imgur.com/KlNlFl2.jpg

dstillman

If you go to the Advanced → Files and Folders pane of the Zotero preferences, what does it say for the data directory location? (You can x out your username.)

newswatcher

http://i.imgur.com/KOI3hrA.jpg

dstillman

(We'd like to make sure migration works without error as much as possible in 5.0, so I appreciate your help with this. Again, your data will be fine — there's just some info we need to understand exactly what happened, and then we can tell you how to recover from it.)

1) In C:\Users\<username>\Zotero, what zotero.sqlite.* files do you see? Is there a 'storage' directory, and how many subdirectories does it have in it? Is there a 'migrate-dir' file?

2) If you go to your Firefox profile directory, is there a 'zotero' directory? What zotero.sqlite.* files do you see in that? Is there a 'migrate-dir' file? Do you see a 'storage' directory with many subdirectories?

newswatcher

http://i.imgur.com/E1nfHcq.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/1SukweN.jpg

newswatcher

OK, I fixed that problem by using the data from the mozilla directory, so all the data is back in the standalone, but still have orig problem of no way to save pages in FireFox...

newswatcher

file:///C:/Users/John/AppData/Roaming/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/36ao3roo.default/zotero/storage/ZJG2KK8G/order_confirm.html