Sync error

sgarrigan

Hi,

I'm using Zotero standalone on a Mac. I have a sync error where 9 or so citations have been updated by another Group Library user and are in the Group Library but do not show up in the standalone (and cannot therefore be edited in Word). Word shows them in my bibliography, but they are not available for editing. My Debug ID is D1806179519.

Thank you!

dstillman

Are you actually receiving a sync error, or are you just not seeing items in the library that you see on other synced computers?

For the latter, see Changes Not Syncing.

sgarrigan

I am not seeing items in the standalone that are showing up in the Group Library on the website. The library is set to sync (the other group user added several sources that are showing up for me on the standalone; it's just about 9 that are problematic). The sources show up in the bibliography as well; they just aren't appearing in the standalone. I only have one account and I'm not receiving a sync error.

dstillman

What do you mean when you say they "show up in the bibliography"? As in, in a shared document? (That wouldn't be relevant.)

See the last step of the linked page. In this case, you'd want to test making a change to one of the items online and see if it then appears locally.

sgarrigan

Oh, it seems like making a change to them in the shared library online makes them show back up in my standalone. Thank you very much!

dstillman

That shouldn't be necessary, of course, so let us know if you continue to see this happen.

For now, simply adding all the affected items to a temporary collection should be enough to trigger a change that makes them sync down.

sgarrigan

Sorry; there are still a few items that are not showing up in either the shared library or my standalone. However, I know they have been added to the shared library because they show up in my Word bibliography generated with Zotero. Is there a way to make these appear?

dstillman

I'm still not understanding what you mean re: the bibliography. Is this a bibliography generated by you or generated by someone else in the group? If the latter, that's not relevant — that just means they were added on another computer.

But if items aren't showing in the online library, they were either deleted or haven't yet been synced from the other computer, and for the latter case you would still want to follow the steps in the linked page.

sgarrigan

I mean the list of references that Word automatically generates in conjunction with Zotero. The reason I'm confused is that they show up in the automated bibliography in Word, but do not show up in the library. I was considering re-adding them, but I really don't want to cause duplicate entry issues--I've had that happen a lot lately when merging documents.

dstillman

But I'm asking if this is a bibliography that you created on this computer or this is in a document you received from someone else in the group. If the latter, it just means that the items were added on another computer and the items haven't synced up to the online library, and the person who added them will need to go through the debugging steps for syncing so that the items sync to other people in the group.

If this is a bibliography that you created on this computer, that suggests the items were deleted in Zotero since you added them and Zotero is just using embedded metadata from the document for the citations. Find the relevant citation in the document (not in the bibliography — the bibliography is just generated by citations in the document), click on it, click Add/Edit Citation, click the blue bubble in the citation dialog, and see if an "Open in My Library" button appears at the bottom. If it doesn't, it's an orphaned citation, and you should add the item to Zotero again and reinsert into the document.

sgarrigan

Thank you very much! It looks like they are indeed orphaned citations, so I can re-add without experiencing duplicate issues.

One more question if that's okay: I have a citation that originally had a duplicate. I've deleted the duplicate from the library and deleted and reinserted all of the citations, but the single citation is still showing up as two citations [Author Date(a) and Author Date(b)]. I've tried copying and pasting the entire document into a new document and refreshing, but that isn't working either. Is there a way to check if I've cleared metadata in the document?

dstillman

I have a citation that originally had a duplicate. I've deleted the duplicate from the library and deleted and reinserted all of the citations

First, note that you should merge duplicates instead of just deleting one. When you merge items, Zotero will automatically use the remaining item for any existing citations pointing to the old one.

For the a/b issue, it almost certainly just means you still have an old citation somewhere with the old data. It may help to temporarily toggle Word field codes and search for the data to make sure you didn't accidentally miss a field or part of a field.