Collections disappeared, but not deleted?

LibelliNoah
Hello all,

Today I was going to click on a collection and my track pad glitched, grabbed two of my collections, and then those two collections have since disappeared. The collections don't seem to have been deleted, because items from those collections that were only in one location do not show up in my unfiled section. All the items are still in my main library with all of their pertinent information too. So, it seems to me like the collections still exist to Zotero, I just can't see them.

I have not synced since this happened, so my last sync contains everything as it should be. What should I do? Apologies if this is the wrong place, this is my first time on the forum.
  • dstillman
    You may have accidentally moved the collections under another collection. (Were these parent/child collections? It's not possible to select multiple collections at a time.)

    Select one of the items you know was in the collection and reveal the collections containing the item. That will hopefully show you the collection elsewhere in your library.
  • LibelliNoah
    They were parent collections. I have been trying to use ctrl to see the collections items are in, but it keeps making Zotero freeze!
  • dstillman
    What do you mean by that? What’s happening, exactly?
  • LibelliNoah
    Okay. After much testing, it appears that the items part of the disappeared ones make Zotero crash when I click CTRL to try and locate them. When I click CTRL on items that were not in the disappeared collections, it works just fine.

    Wild.
  • dstillman
    But what's happening? Is it a freeze or a crash? Are you receiving a message of some sort? Are you able to provide a Report ID after it occurs, before restarting Zotero?
  • LibelliNoah
    I believe it is a freeze. It says Zotero is not responding. I am not getting any type of error ID.
  • dstillman
    You can always provide a Report ID as long as Zotero is still responding — see the link I provided.

    But if you're saying you have to force-quit Zotero after this occurs, that won't work.

    If you go to Help → Debug Output Logging → View Output, does anything appear in the debug window when this happens? If so, can you take a screenshot and either upload it somewhere (e.g., Dropbox) and provide a link here or email it to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread?

    After that, restart Zotero and check your database integrity from the Advanced → Files and Folders pane of the Zotero preferences.
  • LibelliNoah
    I can't do anything once it freezes. This is a link to the picture of the View Output: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14lPqRSjGYdAXUA00rqLrhYU5yV9ldsJQyFCr1JTK7bQ/edit?usp=sharing

    Database Integrity after restarting said no errors were found.
  • dstillman
    If you don't mind, can you upload your database to the DB Repair Tool and post the Upload ID it gives you here? You can ignore the download link the tool provides, which likely won't fix the problem, but the Upload ID will let us run some tests to try to figure out what's going on here.
  • LibelliNoah
    I am working on that now, I will post when I am done. Thanks so much for your help so far.
  • LibelliNoah
    This is the Upload ID: 5e683ad676702
  • dstillman
    Thanks. In the latest Zotero beta, checking your database integrity again should detect and fix the problem. (Also, trying to reveal the collections for the item will no longer freeze Zotero and will instead ask you to Zotero, after which it will fix the problem automatically.)

    You can run the beta just to fix this and switch back to the release version after. The fix will be included in Zotero 5.0.85.

    We'll try to figure out how this happened and fix that as well.
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