After upgrading Zotero, last two years of references are gone

bwbris

I just followed the instructions when Zotero prompted me to upgrade. Now, I see that I am missing several important libraries - both personal and group. When I sort my libraries by date, I see that I have nothing after 2015, even though I have added thousands of references in that time (and of course been syncing all along). Is this a problem others have experienced?

When I look online, I see that my Zotero account is actually up to date. I'm afraid to sync at this point, though, as I'm not sure if this would restore the missing references/libraries to my desktop Zotero, or delete them from my online account. Any help would be really appreciated!

adamsmith

Most likely Zotero just recognized an old copy of your local library (e.g. if you had used Standalone separately from the Firefox add-on previously but the stopped) and you'd be able to still find the old library locally, but if the library is online you can just sync without any concerns.

bwbris

Thanks. It does say that I haven't synced since 2015, which fits with what you're suggesting. When I try to sync (repeatedly), I get an error message after less than a minute (report ID 762602955).

bwiernik

Try to see if you can find the library you were previously using in Zotero Standalone on your computer:
Ihttps://www.zotero.org/support/kb/data_missing_after_zotero_5_upgrade

adamsmith

or we could get the sync sorted out... (both will likely work in the end, so kind of up to you; hard to predict what'll be faster) what is the error you're getting exactly (i.e. what does it say when you click on the red exclamation mark)?

bwbris

I get a message saying 'An error occurred during syncing: operation timed out'. This happens after very little time - maybe a minute.

adamsmith

@dstillman could you check on that?

dstillman

I'd recommend following the instructions in the link bwiernik provided — you likely just had two data directories on your system (from using both Zotero Standalone and Zotero for Firefox in the past) and just need to locate the other one.

bwbris

I couldn't follow the instructions in the previous discussion (https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/data_missing_after_zotero_5_upgrade) as some of it appears to refer to obsolete features in Firefox. I just searched around on my hard drive for a promising-looking Zotero folder and instructed Zotero standalone to use it as the Data Directory Location. This didn't automatically restore the missing references and folders, but it did allow me to sync. It took several hours to sync, but it now looks to have restored everything. Thanks for all the help.

dstillman

I'm not sure what Firefox features you're referring to. Those instructions are up to date and correct.

You almost certainly have your up-to-date data directory somewhere on your computer — probably in your Firefox profile — and using that would be better than syncing another directory to pull down your data, which might leave some data or files missing if you weren't fully in sync before the upgrade. But if you're sure you have all your data and files, syncing is OK.

I would, however, strongly recommend making sure that the data directory you're using is in the default location, which is "Zotero" in your home directory. If that's not your current data directory location, you should close Zotero, move (not copy) your data directory to that location with that name, and then restart Zotero. It should then prompt you to switch to the default location.