Upgrade StoragePaying for storage, can't sync some folders not others
I'm paying for 2 GB of storage. I wanted to free up some of my 2 GB in advance of a big writing project I'm about to undertake. I two group libraries that are not active. I wanted to keep the files on my desktop but delete them on the Web Library to free up some of my 2 GB. I went to Preferences > Choose Libraries and deselected the two groups. Then I deleted the files on the Web Library. The next time I sync'd, the files in the deselected desktop group libraries were deleted. Why did Zotero sync libraries I had deselected and delete those files? Is there a better way of removing files from web storage but not on the desktop? I'm resigned to the fact that I've lost all of those entries and the attached PDFs. Thanks in advance.
But disabling a library from syncing isn't meant for this purpose — it's just meant for avoiding downloading data from large/active libraries that you don't need on a given computer. Even without this bug, it would be trivial for that setting to get reset, or to accidentally right-click on the wrong library and choose Sync (which overrides that setting), so it absolutely shouldn't be used as a way to permanently avoid syncing destructive changes. The way to do this would be by actually deleting the group (not its contents) online, which will cause your local Zotero to prompt whether to delete the group locally or keep an archived copy of it.
As long as the group still exists, syncing means exactly that — if you delete something, you're deleting it everywhere, and it's far too dangerous to make widespread destructive changes to your library and rely on one checkbox to prevent those from being applied.
Just to be sure, you also emptied the trash online? If you just clicked the trash button, items would be moved to the trash.
Thank you.
"The way to do this would be by actually deleting the group (not its contents) online, which will cause your local Zotero to prompt whether to delete the group locally or keep an archived copy of it."
Would never have guessed this was the way to do it. With the other cloud services I use (Dropbox, One Drive, Google, Box), if I want to delete online content but keep it locally, I do that by selecting the folders I want to sync. I've never accidentally checked or unchecked the wrong box. I'll know for next time.
"actually deleting the group (not its contents) online, which will cause your local Zotero to prompt whether to delete the group locally or keep an archived copy of it."
I think I need to look more into the archive function on Zotero. I didn't realize that was an option.
Thanks so much for the response.
But you certainly wouldn't delete a file in Dropbox online and expect it not to be deleted in your Dropbox folder locally. That's the equivalent of what you did here.
But "Don't sync to dropbox.com" removes the files online for you — you don't delete manually delete them online, and you can toggle that on or off at any time to restore/remove the files online. If Zotero had an equivalent feature, it would work the same way, from the desktop app. I'm not aware of any way in Dropbox to "delete the content on the cloud" and have the content on your computer stay, and it wouldn't really make sense — the website has no way of knowing whether a copy of the file is stored locally on some computer, so it wouldn't be a safe thing to allow.
My point is really just that you should never expect to do any sort of manual deletion, in any tool, and rely on ignore-from-sync settings to prevent the deletion from transferring. Maybe something allows it, but sync systems generally work by queuing and transferring explicit operations, like deletions, so it'd always be an inherently dangerous thing to do.