Zotero references missing

jonnapetzold

Hi, A few months ago I was asked to update zotero to the newest version. I am a mac user, and for some reason after the update I had two zotero applications on my computer - Zotero and Zotero 2 (i.e. two separate applications). I started saving references into the zotero 2 application, as I understood this was the most up to date version. Today, my Zotero presented with an error and updated itself. Now, when I open up Zotero, only the references present in the application before my last update are present, and all other references are gone. I had problems with sync for the last couple of years so have only used the desktop version of Zotero not the online version. Is there a way I can retrieve these lost references?

Thank you very much for your help,

dstillman

for some reason after the update I had two zotero applications on my computer - Zotero and Zotero 2 (i.e. two separate applications)

If you're talking about within the Applications folder, that would just happen if you were manually reinstalling Zotero and chose "Keep Both" when the Finder asked you if you wanted to replace the existing version. Updating from within the program would never create two copies.

In any case, these don't contain any data — they're just the program files — so you should just delete both of them and reinstall from the download page.

After that, see Locating Missing Zotero Data and, if you're still having trouble, let us know what you tried from that section and what you determined when trying each step.