One of my FOLDERS is no longer visible

JVCSJ

One of my Main Folders, with many sub-groups, all of a sudden disappeared and I an no longer able to find it. After activating SYNC w/ Zotero, I got the following error:
2009480016. Is this the explanation for the problem I am reporting? To miss a folder like the one I am talking about represents the loss of much work. Please, assist me as soon as possible. The help received is always greatly appreciated. Thank you!

dstillman

Before doing anything else, you should immediately make a backup of all the zotero.sqlite* files in your Zotero data directory.

If this just happened, you should be able to restore the collection from one of your last automatic backups.

dstillman

@JVCSJ: Make the backups of the zotero.sqlite* files, but actually, before you try restoring from the last automatic backup, try checking your database integrity from the Advanced → Files and Folders pane of the Zotero preferences. If you just deleted the collection by accident, that wouldn't help and you would need to do the restore, but there's a possibility that the collection somehow just became improperly nested in a way that caused it to disappear, and that would be fixed by the integrity check.

JVCSJ

Have done the checking of the database as mentioned and the result is that everything is ok («no problems»). The matter is that I still can not find the FOLDER with the many other subfolders I mentioned. IN this context, I would like to ask:

IF I export from my second computer that particular folder and then IMPORT in the main computer, would it be a way of solving the problem? The fact is that I am not missing the items; they seem to be there. But the FOLDER [the named started with
"[4] BBB" remains invisible to me. Kindly assist whenever you can. Your answers always give me peace of mind. I trust that this problem will be solved. In the past, I unwillingly moved FOLDERS around (I wish Zotero would have a way of BLOCKING the file structure so that those accidental movements would not be possible at all within Zotero). IN the past. I was always able to find the foplders accidentaly moved to other places; not this time, though; at least so far. THANK YOU.

dstillman

You don't need to export anything, and doing so will cause duplicates. See the instructions I linked to above.

dstillman

@JVCSJ: You can also try selecting one of the items that was in the collection and checking the collections containing it. That would show you if the collection just ended up somewhere else in your library. Otherwise, see what I said above.

dstillman

@JVCSJ: A collection starting with "[4] BBB" still exists in your library online, nested within some other collections, so you almost certainly just moved it somewhere and can find it by checking one of the items as I suggest in my previous message without needing to restore from a backup.

JVCSJ

THANK YOU for the precious help. Thanks very much indeed!