"File Not Found: The attached file could not be found."

anaselli

I store my Zotero attachments on my hard drive, and for many of them I am seeing the following error message when I attempt to open them:

"File Not Found: The attached file could not be found. It may have been moved or deleted outside of Zotero, or, if the file was added on another computer, it may not yet have been synced to or from zotero.org."

Here's what happened: Yesterday my school's IT person planned to transfer my previous MacBook to a new (refurbished) MacBook. The plan was for this to be seamless and would require me to install no programs, etc. I was supposed to receive a carbon-copy of my previous computer on the new one. But the transfer was unsuccessful, and it destroyed the hard drive on my previous MacBook. So I lost everything.

I backed up my Zotero library with CrashPlan. My Zotero library is large—about 44,000 items (and about 20,200 of those items have attachments that I store on my hard drive). I downloaded what I backed up with CrashPlan, and my Zotero library seems to be intact. But there's one big problem. It appears that all of the Zotero entries I added attachments to from October 1, 2018 through June 22, 2019 (the last one I added) are not showing up. The attachment appears to be there in Zotero for each item (e.g., I can see the PDF icon with the file name), but when I attempt to open it, I see the above error report. When I click "Locate" and search for the attachment on my hard drive, it doesn't appear in Finder. There are 2,299 items in Zotero like this (that I know of at present).

Any advice?

Thanks,
Andy Naselli
www.AndyNaselli.com/about

bwiernik

Given the size of your library, what you are likely seeing is that all of your attachment files have not finished downloading. In the Sync pane of Zotero preferences, change "Download Files" to "As Needed" and then try to open the attachment file.

anaselli

Thanks. I may be misunderstanding you, but I think what you advise applies if I am syncing my attachment files with Zotero. But I'm not. (That's why in Zotero Preferences > Sync > File Syncing, I have checked neither box.)

adamsmith

And you're positive the files where there before crash?

If you're syncing attachments at all, how are you doing that?

The fact that files from a particular period are missing really suggests that they were never there in the first place.

dstillman

As I understand it, this doesn't have anything to do with file syncing. @anaselli is just restoring from a backup.

My guess is that the backup is from October, and after restoring, Zotero pulled down the more recent changes via sync. Since file syncing was disabled, that doesn't include any files, so items and attachments since October appeared but the attachment files were missing.

But this should be simple enough to check by looking in the backup. Just look at the dates of the zotero.sqlite* files in the Zotero data directory in the backup, as well as the subfolders of the 'storage' folder there. Assuming CrashPlan preserves original timestamps, those should correspond to your usage of Zotero with that data directory.

anaselli

Thank you for your help.

Here are the files in the Zotero data directory:
1. zotero.sqlite | created 9/17/13, modified today
2. zotero.sqlite-journal | created yesterday, modified today
3. zotero.sqlite.1.bak | created 9/30/18, modified 9/30/18
4. zotero.sqlite.bak | created yesterday, modified yesterday

Do these two conclusions follow?
1. The issue is with item 3 in that list. CrashPlan didn't back up attachments after 9/30/18.
2. My only hope of recovering the PDFs after 9/30/18 is to recover them off the hard drive of my previous MacBook.

dstillman

The question is what's in the backup, not your current data directory. If CrashPlan didn't back up your Zotero data directory since October and you weren't using file syncing, you would need to recover the attachment files from your old computer.

But yes, a zotero.sqlite.1.bak in your current data directory with a date of 9/30 would strongly suggest that the backup it was restored from was from October 1st or so.

anaselli

Update: I paid a company that specializes in recovering data to recover my hard drive. They just informed me that they were able to recover it.

Question: Should I simply copy-and-replace my entire Zotero folder? (I have not added any new attachments in Zotero on my new computer. I've created 17 new items but have purposely not added any attachments in case of this scenario.)

adamsmith

Yes copy & replace, but not the entire Zotero folder but the storage folder within it, i.e. Zotero/storage
That will restore all your attachments. As I understand your Zotero metadata has all been there the whole time.

anaselli

Thanks.

Good news: I just got the recovered hard drive.

Bad news: It appears that the recovered hard drive didn't recover everything. Here's what I see when I click "get info" on the "storage" folder:

(1) for my new MacBook (which is missing over 20,000 Zotero attachments)
120.67 GB for 120,062 items

(2) for my recovered hard drive:
93.59 GB for 108,488 items

Looks like this won't be as clean a transition as I was hoping for.