Upgrade StorageHow I got my library to sync: a fix
[Editor's note: This is not recommended. See below. — D.S.]
I went through all the suggestions at http://www.zotero.org/support/sync#file_syncing, plus I checked my database integrity and reset my storage history, purged my storage files, all that, tried to reset and sync from my local data -- nothing was working; I still got a yellow flag on the green curly sync arrow when I tried to sync to zotero.org, and I couldn't get anything up to the server. Had a blank library for a bit on zotero.org.
I figured it was some problem in my library with a corrupt or just overly large attachment, and I think that's been borne out. My library was very big; the zotero folder in my Firefox profile was 116Mb, and after troubleshooting, it's only 8Mb. So here's what I did:
1) I backed up the zotero folder in my Firefox folder (easy to find in Zotero Preferences --> Advanced --> Show data directory). I copied the whole folder elsewhere, and as I said, it was 116Mb. There were like 112 folders in the "storage" folder with alphabet soup names.
2) I cleaned out some references from my library that I didn't need. It might only have been this that fixed it, but I didn't delete *that* many references, so I don't think so.
3) I then exported all my collections as separate RIS files (collection1.ris, collection2.ris, etc.).
4) I turned off automatic syncing in the Zotero prefs.
5) I deleted all the references and collections within Zotero, then emptied the Zotero trash and closed Firefox.
6) I reopened Firefox and imported one collection at a time, renaming the collection from "Imported on blah blah date" to the former collection name, then manually syncing after each import and checking to make sure it worked on zotero.org.
This worked beautifully; all my collections are now in my library on zotero.org, and the Zotero folder in my Firefox profile has shrunk to 8Mb, and there's only one folder in the "storage" folder. I feel lean and clean, and now I'm going to turn automatic syncing back on.
Hope this helps.
I went through all the suggestions at http://www.zotero.org/support/sync#file_syncing, plus I checked my database integrity and reset my storage history, purged my storage files, all that, tried to reset and sync from my local data -- nothing was working; I still got a yellow flag on the green curly sync arrow when I tried to sync to zotero.org, and I couldn't get anything up to the server. Had a blank library for a bit on zotero.org.
I figured it was some problem in my library with a corrupt or just overly large attachment, and I think that's been borne out. My library was very big; the zotero folder in my Firefox profile was 116Mb, and after troubleshooting, it's only 8Mb. So here's what I did:
1) I backed up the zotero folder in my Firefox folder (easy to find in Zotero Preferences --> Advanced --> Show data directory). I copied the whole folder elsewhere, and as I said, it was 116Mb. There were like 112 folders in the "storage" folder with alphabet soup names.
2) I cleaned out some references from my library that I didn't need. It might only have been this that fixed it, but I didn't delete *that* many references, so I don't think so.
3) I then exported all my collections as separate RIS files (collection1.ris, collection2.ris, etc.).
4) I turned off automatic syncing in the Zotero prefs.
5) I deleted all the references and collections within Zotero, then emptied the Zotero trash and closed Firefox.
6) I reopened Firefox and imported one collection at a time, renaming the collection from "Imported on blah blah date" to the former collection name, then manually syncing after each import and checking to make sure it worked on zotero.org.
This worked beautifully; all my collections are now in my library on zotero.org, and the Zotero folder in my Firefox profile has shrunk to 8Mb, and there's only one folder in the "storage" folder. I feel lean and clean, and now I'm going to turn automatic syncing back on.
Hope this helps.
I did wonder whether Zotero RDF might be a better format, and if RIS hadn't worked then I'd have retried with that. I definitely didn't wipe out all my attachments, since I've still got all my notes and snapshots in my recreated client library, which is fine for me. At one point I had actually turned off PDF capture in the preferences, having determined that I didn't want to save PDFs, so if the PDFs got deleted I don't happen to mind. I've still got my original backup, anyway, so I can restore from that if necessary. Space isn't a concern for me, but I usually have an internet connection, so I'd rather not save the PDFs automatically.
I understand that you're not going to recommend import/export to fix sync problems, but just out of curiosity, would recreating the library with Zotero RDF have retained the PDFs?
I hovered plenty over the yellow triangle and didn't get an error message, but I'll try again with "Report error" and see what I can do. I don't use the word processing plugins, so if I still have trouble syncing I might be stubborn and do the RDF import/export anyway. Thanks for writing about the data loss.