Lost all notes on unlinked Zotero program on mac

liansh

Would greatly appreciate someone's help here.

I downloaded Zotero to my mac, and had yet to link it to an account when I had inputted maybe 10-11 standalone notes. When I finally created a new account and linked it to my computer's Zotero, all the notes in my library disappeared.

Is there any way to recover these notes?

I tried following previous forums with going to the data directory, copying the sq file to a folder renamed "Zotero-Old" but it didn't do anything. Not sure if I did it right though.

dstillman

When I finally created a new account and linked it to my computer's Zotero, all the notes in my library disappeared.

That doesn't happen. These are the only ways for your existing data to be deleted when you sync:

1) You (or someone on a synced computer) deleted the items elsewhere or in a previous copy of the data directory and then synced to pull down those deletions.

2) You unlinked your account and checked "Remove my Zotero data from this computer" in the confirmation dialog.

3) You previously set up syncing with a different account, switched accounts, and checked "Remove existing data" in the confirmation dialog.

Simply syncing a new database with an empty online library will never delete local items — syncing just doesn't work that way.

At this point, depending on when you created the items, you can try restoring from one of the last automatic backups.