missing database

stephhunter

Hi,

I opened my desktop Zotero this morning and got this message:

You are about to sync the ‘my account’ 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.


I've read another forum with the same problem and its not clear to me how to restore my library. The data dictionary location is under my user folder, and there is the sqlite file and storage folder. Am I missing something that is needed to restore my database?

Can I do anything with my web library (which is still there) to get it back into my desktop library?

dstillman

Usually when this happens it's from someone accidentally deleting their Zotero database while using a disk cleanup program.

If all your data is online, you can just sync, but you should first follow the steps in Locating Missing Zotero Data and provide the info there so that we can confirm that you did, in fact, delete your database and it isn't just somewhere else.

stephhunter

I did clean up my desktop yesterday so that was probably the case.


If I sync to the empty zotero database, will that empty my online database as well?
If I have a 252 MB bak file from two days ago, can I use that to restore my library?

dstillman

If I sync to the empty zotero database, will that empty my online database as well?

No, of course not — it's just the same as syncing a new computer.

If I have a 252 MB bak file from two days ago, can I use that to restore my library?

You can swap that in as zotero.sqlite and it will start with that, and just download any recent data. It doesn't really matter, as long as you were fully in sync before you deleted the file.

dstillman

@stephhunter: Out of curiosity, what program did you use to delete files?