Notes text disappearing

mebrett

This has only started happening since I updated to the latest version. When I use the desktop version *and have the notes editing in a separate window, new text disappears when Zotero syncs (which seems to happen any time I hit return). Typing in the regular window seems to be fine.

For now, I'm writing up my notes in an external editor and will copy and paste them, rather than continue to lose 2-5 sentences every few minutes.

bwiernik

Can you submit a Debug ID (from the Help menu) for a sequence of steps leading to the note text disappearing? There have been a few reports of similar issues, and that would help to narrow down exactly where the bug is.

mebrett

I've sent in a log D1734497471, but of course once I restarted with logging enabled the issue stopped occurring...

bwiernik

If you can figure out how to make the error happen, that would be very helpful. The Zotero devs are having a hard time figuring out when this happens so they can fix it.

DWL-SDCA

As I said in an earlier thread, this is a rare, intermittent problem for me. I don’t ever use the search utility, thus, one of the precipitating factors does not involve a search-in-progress. Also, at least one of my machines does not auto-sync and this disappearing note problem also happens there when there isn’t a manual sync underway. The last few times that I planned to work with notes, I turned on debug logging. I could edit my notes without a problem. I’ll continue to activate the log each time I’m going to work with notes. I thought that debug logging might slow things down but I’ve not noticed any real delay much less anything bothersome.

mebrett

Don't worry, I'll keep logging on for both my machines and send them in if it happens again

adirecto

I have experienced this bug multiple times (at least five times) today. Here's my most recent error log report number: 1624651714. Earlier today I posted a different error log number when I experienced this problem around the third time and before I discovered this thread. Let me know if it would help to provide that earlier error log number as well.

adamsmith

I believe this should be fixed in the latest beta / Zotero 5.0.31: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/295420/#Comment_295420

aremus08

I have the latest update (Zotero 5.0.31), and I continue to have the problem. Report number: 1751027259

dstillman

@aremus08: What's the exact problem that you're experiencing? Can you provide exact steps from Zotero startup to reproduce the problem? There were two separate note-related issues fixed in 5.0.31, so as I say in the other thread, if you're still having trouble we need more details.

aremus08

@dstillman As I type text in a note (independent notes as well as notes in the text box section of PDFs or Snapshots), several words and/or whole lines of text will disappear and my cursor will reset at the beginning of the note. Does that explain it? Happy to give more details.

dstillman

Does auto-sync need to be enabled? Does there need to be an active search in the search bar?

aremus08

Auto-sync is enabled. The text will disappear regardless of whether there is an active search or not.

dstillman

If you're able to reproduce this fairly easily, can you enable debug output logging from the Help menu, reproduce this (or leave logging on until it happens), and then submit the debug output and post the Debug ID here?

aremus08

D1646985070

Typed text was deleted and the cursor reset at the beginning of the note three times while debug output logging was enabled.

changshenghui

I am a new users of ZOTERO(5.0.33) and encounter the same problem these days

muneca8320

Was any progress made in solving this problem? I've been having this exact problem in Zotero 5.0.53. It doesn't seem to be tied to syncing. It just occasionally happens that the last few seconds of text I typed in a note disappear and the cursor returns to the beginning of the note. Hugely inconvenient. Anything to be done on this?

dstillman

Known causes of this related to syncing have been fixed.

Otherwise, same as above — we'd want a Debug ID if you can reproduce it.

It doesn't seem to be tied to syncing.

Meaning you're seeing this with auto-sync disabled? Because it's highly likely to be related to syncing.

muneca8320

Here's my debugging report, though I have to say, it's a sporadic not continuous thing, so when I tried to repeat the action, there wasn't actually a problem (D658276473). I guess I could try to have auto-sync disabled, but that's such a critical function that im hesitant to turn it off even briefly.

dstillman

The Debug ID would need to be for when the problem occurs.

bknorn

This issue keeps disturbing me when I am writing text into notes:
1. Start writing text into a note or into the notes field of an attached file.
2. When Zotero starts indexing an attached file or syncing the library, the text written during this process gets deleted.
3. The cursor jumps to the beginning of the line and continues to write from there.

For debugging, I can reproduce the issue like that (Debug ID: D1734287008):
1. I triggered Zotero to index again an attached pdf file (39 scanned pages with OCR text, 1.1 MB).
2. During the indexing process, I wrote into the notes field of the same attached file in Zotero: "This is an important note text." I started typing after some already existing text in the note (= "Existing text.")
3. The indexing process was done after typing "This is an im". These words suddenly disappeared. The cursor jumped to the beginning of the line, before "Existing text." There, I continued to type "portant note text."

As I said above, this happens also during syncing and in normal (yellow) notes.
I am using Zotero 5.0.81 on Ubuntu Linux 19.10.

Update: This happens also when automatic syncing and automatic full text syncing are disabled (Debug ID D1864722419). In this case, I was typing "This is an important note" into the same notes field. "This is an important" disappeared right after the indexing process.

dstillman

@bknorn: OK, I can reproduce this — thanks for the clear steps. We'll take a look.

mghaz

Same problem here, persisting over a year and later with Zotero 5.0.96.1.
Is there no fix?

The symptoms are the same. As I am typing a note, seemingly randomly the recent few lines of text are just randomly deleted. It's extremely frustrating.

I did not have debugging enabled (oops), but I just reported the Error with Report# 1724768459. I have debugging now enabled, so I will have a code.

I have no idea whether I am using an 'embedded attachment note' or how to switch to a normal note. Would love to know how to do that (and what the tradeoffs of doing that are).

dstillman

I have no idea whether I am using an 'embedded attachment note'

That's the note editor that shows up in the right-hand pane when an attachment is selected in the middle pane. That's the only case of this occurring that we're currently aware of. If that's what you're using, create regular notes instead.

The note editor is being replaced, so we won't be fixing this. The new note editor is available for testing in My Library in the latest Zotero beta.

mghaz

@dstillman Thanks so much: avoiding embedded attachment notes is easy enough, and so far as avoided the problem

Looking forward to the new note editor.

mghaz

@dstillman FYI: Just experienced a random deletion with a non-embedded attachment note

I sent an error report with the number 1786862684