Desktop app Library disappeared

njefferson1119

Yesterday I updated my computer to macOS Big Sur, and when I opened the Zotero desktop app this morning, my library was completely empty. (I also deleted some files yesterday to clear up space for the update, and it's possible I accidentally deleted something from Zotero).

My web library still has all of my citations, and the Zotero folder on my computer still has all of my PDF files. When I click "sync" I get a popup telling me:

"You are about to sync the [my account name] account to an empty Zotero database. This could happen if you removed your previous database or if the location of your Zotero data directory changed.

If your Zotero data exists elsewhere on this computer, you should move it to the current data directory or change the data directory location to point to your existing data."

But the data directory location is already pointing to the Zotero folder on my computer where all of my files are.

What do I need to do to get my Library to show up in the desktop app? Do I sync? My fear is that if I sync my web library will sync to the empty database and I'll lose all of my citations.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

dstillman

(I also deleted some files yesterday to clear up space for the update, and it's possible I accidentally deleted something from Zotero).

Yes, you did. If your database is large enough, the built-in macOS storage tool (and third-party disk-cleaning tools) would list it as a large file, but you should never delete files without knowing what they are. If you delete a file named zotero.sqlite, you're not going to have Zotero data anymore.

You can just sync to pull down your data from the last time you synced.