Upgrade StorageZotero Syncing - version history and restoring tags and attached files
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I have many other group libraries that I need to restore and want to make sure we have all of the necessary steps before proceeding (hopefully with pdfs). After our results on the IKI-BackgroundLit sync, do you advise that we should proceed with your amended process for other libraries?
If not, I would ignore files for now, make sure you have backups of all data directories where files might have been created or download, and follow the above steps for the other libraries. But this method (with the initial deletion of all items in the online library) is a bit riskier with regard to files. If you have all the associated 'storage' directories, you should be able to reassociate the files, but it might take more work.
I can also tell you that we did identify a bug with conflict resolution that could cause the local version not to be kept when it was selected, so that's probably what you experienced originally and also may be why the restore steps I gave above didn't entirely work. That bug is fixed in the current version.
On another issue: in anticipation of this, I have tried to set up a Zotero instance on a "fresh" computer and have gotten errors after trying to sync multiple times. I am running the newest version, with latest updates, and have gotten these error report IDs: 1671308522 and 438318420. I have not changed any settings after installing Zotero. Any advice?
As a last hope - is the restore function/syncing more reliable for personal libraries at this time? If converting our group libraries to personal libraries is a feasible workaround that would retain Zotero unique keys and give us the option to share (presumably via Zotero file backups), please provide the best steps for us.
But if you install the beta, you can now choose an individual library from the Sync -> Reset pane of the preferences and do a Restore to Online Library, which should update the state of the library on zotero.org with the local version, including files. There's not yet a Restore from Online Library option for other computers, but if you make sure that all the other computers are in sync, the new restored version should sync down to those without your needing to do anything special. (It doesn't really matter what happens to the data on the various computers before the restore, since you'll just be updating to the version from your backup, but it's probably a good idea to sync each one a few times, since syncing one may cause changes that need to be synced to the others. Once they're all finishing the sync instantaneously, you'll know you can proceed with the restore.) The other computers don't need the beta version, but it's probably a good idea to temporarily disable auto-sync on those and make sure the restore goes through correctly before trying to pull down the new data.
We've just added this feature to the beta and it hasn't been extensively tested, so there may very well be bugs, but as long as you have a backup of your Zotero data directory, there's no risk to your data, and we can (quickly) work through any issues you find. I'd recommend starting debug output logging from the Help menu before starting the restore so that if there's a problem you can post a Debug ID.
Again, really sorry to keep you waiting here, and if you try this, let me know if you have any trouble so we can make sure you're up and running again as soon as possible.