Upgrade StorageDatabase ownership, sync, new account issues
So I recently deleted a Zotero account I had used for syncing my database, because I had too many linked files synced for Zotero's 100 MB file capacity. I unlinked the account in my Zotero desktop software, but I decided a few months after that I should give it another try with another account, but not upload any of the files so I would not be bothered by the limit warnings, so I made a new account (this one) and tried to link it with my old database, which I had accumulated for a year or so.
I got a warning saying that the old database was previously synced with another account, and I would need to remove the previous account data. I thought this was odd, since I had unlinked it, and why would it still have a sync history if I had unlinked it. Fine. I made a 7z of my database, and thought not to move it, hoping the deletion of data would not include the entire folder. I was wrong, and a bit careless, and it promtply deleted everything.
Thankfully, I had an earlier backup of the database, but I still lost several days of work, and I still could not sync my old database because, at one point, I synced it with another account, and now it won't sync with my new one
There is no option to remove the sync history, and I was not able to force sync my days-old database. Since I deleted my previous account, the username, for obvious reasons, cannot be used again, but at the same time, transferring 'ownership' of the database is impossible. Exporting my database fails to export any of the hundreds of linked files (or even the relative location) I have for each of my entries, so it seems my new Zotero account is useless, and my database is now a complete liability for the future.
Is there anything possible for me to do to solve this issue?
I got a warning saying that the old database was previously synced with another account, and I would need to remove the previous account data. I thought this was odd, since I had unlinked it, and why would it still have a sync history if I had unlinked it. Fine. I made a 7z of my database, and thought not to move it, hoping the deletion of data would not include the entire folder. I was wrong, and a bit careless, and it promtply deleted everything.
Thankfully, I had an earlier backup of the database, but I still lost several days of work, and I still could not sync my old database because, at one point, I synced it with another account, and now it won't sync with my new one
There is no option to remove the sync history, and I was not able to force sync my days-old database. Since I deleted my previous account, the username, for obvious reasons, cannot be used again, but at the same time, transferring 'ownership' of the database is impossible. Exporting my database fails to export any of the hundreds of linked files (or even the relative location) I have for each of my entries, so it seems my new Zotero account is useless, and my database is now a complete liability for the future.
Is there anything possible for me to do to solve this issue?
In Zotero 5, it's not currently possible to use a database that was synced with one account with a different account. This used to be possible in Zotero 4 and earlier, but there's various data in the database that would need to be modified or deleted to sync with a different account, so to keep things clean and avoid unexpected bugs, switching the account for a database is no longer supported.
The standard use case here is just people wanting to change their username, and that's now possible in the account preferences. Your case is different, since you actually deleted your account for other reasons and now want to reuse the database. That's reasonable, and I think we'll have to look into supporting this one way or another.
It may be a little while until that happens, though, so in the meantime your best options is probably to export to Zotero RDF and import using the Zotero beta, which now should import relative paths to linked files if you uncheck "Export Files" at export time. Let me know if that doesn't work for you. You'll still lose Date Added/Modified and links to items from existing word processor documents.