Purging online files

kj30

Hi all -

I need to remove pdfs from my (online) personal library to make space for pdfs in a group folder. I have been looking for answers for over 2 hours and can't find what I'm after, sincere apologies if it's there and I'm just not understanding what I'm reading. Here's my situation:

my 300 MB storage space is full
I don't need any pdfs in my online personal library
I DO need pdfs in a group library
I do not want to remove the pdfs that are already living online in the group folder (or I want a way to add only those back in)
I would like to keep pdfs locally if possible, but at this point I'm getting desperate
I've ended up starting to delete pdfs from my local storage in order to clear some room, but that is very, very suboptimal.
If nothing else is possible, I'm willing to try removing pdfs one by one in my online personal library, but I can't even see how to do that.

I have seen that purging storage is an option (I think??), but it looks like that will purge all attachments (those in my personal library and the group library).

I'm on a Mac OS 10.13.6, Zotero 5.0.64

Any help is very much appreciated. The anxiety is growing exponentially.

Kelly

adamsmith

- Disable file sync for "My Library" in the Zotero preferences
- Click "Purge Storage" here: https://www.zotero.org/settings/storage (which only purges your personal library - it says so in small print below the button)
- Enable file sync for groups

kj30

Thanks for your help adamsmith!

I was able to purge my personal library, but now I'm missing some records from the group library (both online and locally). Before the purge I had 969 records in a local group subfolder, but afterwards I am only showing 768 both locally and online. Any hints on how to recover the others? I'm sure it was user error on my end...

Many thanks!

dstillman

Purging your files doesn't have any effect on your items, so it wouldn't be related to this. Without knowing what else you did, I don't think we'll be able to suggest any way to recover the other items.

In general, if you delete items by mistake, you can sometimes recover them from your last automatic backup.

kj30

As I understood it I wouldn't be affecting my group libraries at all when I purged my files. I haven't done anything other than the steps that adamsmith recommended. I'll see if I can reload Covidence file and go from there. Thanks for your help!

dstillman

That's right, purging files also doesn't affect group libraries. It's entirely about files — not items — in your personal library, and only online, with no effect on your local database. So it definitely wasn't the cause of what you're describing.