collection erased

dsepulchre

Hello,

I am writing to you because I am very annoyed. Zotero was installed on two computers (mine and my girlfriend's). However, wanting to make some room on her computer, she deleted the entire Zotero library from her computer, believing that this would only affect her own computer. When I opened the Zotero software on my computer, I saw that everything was gone. The library had been collecting my research for three years and now there is nothing left.

Is there any way to find everything?

Thank you. Thank you.

emilianoeheyns

Did she have a synced collection, which she deleted in Zotero, or did she uninstall Zotero and deleted the files from disk? The 2nd scenario shouldn't have affected your copy at all.

dsepulchre

It's the first scenario...

emilianoeheyns

In either case, look in your one zotero files *now* to see whether you have an unaffected backup of the zotero database. Zotero does keep backups, you may be able to restore from this.

dsepulchre

I was the only one working on Zotero, but everything was always being synchronised on her computer

dsepulchre

I have something called zotero.squilte.bak. Does it help?

emilianoeheyns

Yep. Save a copy of that.

dsepulchre

Done

emilianoeheyns

Others will be better able to assist you in restoring the db, but you want that copy somewhere safe outside the zotero directory.

dsepulchre

Thanks allot for your help. What can I do now?

emilianoeheyns

I have some ideas but I'd prefer people with more expertise handle this - the zotero developers monitor these forums and I'm sure they'll hop in as soon as they can.

dsepulchre

OK, thks

dsepulchre

for all your help ! Have a nice day

dstillman

@dsepulchre: Have you resolved this? See Restoring Your Zotero Library from a Backup for instructions, but note that if you don't have a backup of the entire Zotero data directory you may not be able to restore attached files, only item data and notes.