Lost input to note in stand-alone program

rholway

I was typing a lengthy note without manually saving it (by clicking the revolving green arrow icon.) I somehow inadvertently switched to another screen and almost all the text I had written in the note was lost.

Is there a temp file where I might find my lost ideas?

I guess the moral is that it's necessary to frequently save notes manually.

dstillman

Notes save automatically — there's no such thing as saving manually. Syncing isn't the same as saving (though we do recommend keeping auto-sync enabled).

Obviously you shouldn't lose note content in any case.

If you did sync at all while writing the note, email support@zotero.org with a link to this thread and some phrases that would've been in the note, and we can take a look.

rholway

As I reconstructed the note, I checked my online library from time to time, and there is a time lag between writing and syncing. Part of the original note was synced, but most was not when I hit the wrong key and inadvertently scooted out of the window I was working in and couldn't get back. I guess the moral, for me, is to sync manually (the circular green arrow at top right of stand-alone program screen) if I want to be really careful about not losing work between when I write it and when it automatically syncs. Does that make sense?

Anyway, thanks for the offer to search for lost phrases, but I did reconstruct the note well enough for my purposes.

dstillman

When auto-sync is enabled, Zotero syncs automatically 15 seconds after you last stopped typing, so there really shouldn't be a need to sync manually.

It goes both ways, though. If auto-sync is enabled and you accidentally clear the note, that would sync as well. In that case we can likely recover the note if people contact us quickly. We're looking into adding the ability to pull up previous versions of notes in order to enable people to recover from that themselves.

rholway

Ah, that's good to know. I was typing for a long time without stopping before I somehow bumped myself out of the note.

While I have your attention, I notice that misspelled words are highlighted in the stand alone program just like they would be heere if I misspellled a word. But unlike heere you can't right click and get a set of suggested corrections. For someone who makes as many typing mistakes as I do, that would be a great help. And since Zotero already detects misspellings, it seems like you are halfway there already.