Unable to open previously created Zotero library

jpk15

Hi: I'm working with a student here at Cornell who recently switched computers and is now having difficulty opening her previously created Zotero library. Part of this may be that she had all her Zotero files in Box, which I know is a problem. I had her move all of those files to her desktop, but she still cannot open the file.

She writes "I can't open Zotero at all! I can't get into the Preferences because I can't open the application. The warning message comes up and the only options are "Check for Update" and "Quit". I can't click past them into the Zotero application. If I click "Check for Update" it checks for an update and then I just get the same warning message. If I click "Quit", the application just quits. "

I had her reinstall Zotero,but still same problem. She never had an online Zotero library to back up from, unfortunately.

I can share a screen shot of her folder if that's helpful. Is there anything you can think of that she might try to get her old library back?

Thanks, Jim

dstillman

The database may be corrupted from being in Box, but we'd need the full startup error to say more.

If it is corrupted, see Corrupted Database.

jpk15

Thanks. One of the error codes she got when her files were still in Box was 0x800704D5. Now that she's moved everything to her computer, she says that at this point there is no error message-- her library just doesn't come up despite her storage being set to the right location. She also has 12 sqlite files in her data directory for some reason. Thanks for any suggestions on how we might be able to recover this!

dstillman

her library just doesn't come up

What does that mean, though? What happens?

despite her storage being set to the right location

To be clear, this doesn't have anything to do with 'storage' — 'storage' is a subfolder of the data directory but it's not relevant for the data you see when you start Zotero. This is about the zotero.sqlite file, and the setting in question is the "data directory", which should be set to the folder containing zotero.sqlite (which should generally just be the default "Zotero" folder within the home directory).

She also has 12 sqlite files in her data directory for some reason.

It sounds like Box made a total mess of her data directory. The way to fix it would be to find a copy of zotero.sqlite that isn't damaged, isn't empty (isn't 1 MB or 5 MB), and is as recent as possible, and to make sure it's named "zotero.sqlite" in the data directory, so that Zotero uses it when it starts up.