Loosing field data while editing when Zotero syncs

dstillman

This discussion was created from comments split from: Suggestion "interval sync option" & Zotero Error Report ID: 1028726921.

elliea

I am an ordinary user and have never gotten errors like this, but I too would love to be able to adjust the sync frequency. I am constantly losing small amounts of data in fields I am currently editing when Zotero syncs. If I could set the frequency to be less often, then this would happen less often. Today I accidentally select-all and deleted something I had written long ago, and sync immediately copied the loss to cloud. Too bad. (An "undo" function would also help, but I assume there's a reason that's not implemented.)

Yes, I could be more disciplined and write my abstracts and notes in text files, and then copy and paste into Zotero. But a slightly less frequent sync, say, every two or five minutes, would also help.

dstillman

(Please start new threads for new issues — the thread you posted to was years old and about a different issue. I've moved this to a new thread.)

Obviously you shouldn't lose field data when a sync happens, so the sync interval isn't relevant here.

Can you provide a Debug ID for this happening, along with precise steps to reproduce it?

elliea

Thank you for following up. I can't actually reproduce this bug on demand, so I am probably wrong about what's causing it. I'll turn on logging and if it happens again, I can let you know. It's really not a big deal though; I've never lost more than a few words.

The main reason I'd like to be able to set the sync frequency is because of user error, not a bug. If I am editing the abstract and accidentally select all and delete everything, the very frequent sync means that I can't use online Zotero in order to get it back. (Maybe I can use the Zotero .bak files to revert to a backup? But that might mean I lose recent changes that I wanted to keep.) Should I start a new thread with a feature request for this? I'm not sure anyone else would want this feature, since it's really just a workaround for my sloppy work habits.

elliea

Hi, I experienced the bug where recently added text mysteriously disappeared before my eyes while I was writing it. It occurred in a Note that I was editing. Here's the Debug ID: D1831597805. I imagine the log will be very long, because I turned on logging two days ago, and it only happened just now. After it happened I immediately submitted the Debug report.

Looking at the error log, I see that there's nothing reported except a repeated error about the WebSocket connection, which I imagine doesn't have to do with this behavior, because it is repeated so many times. (Not sure why there's no timestamp though.) So I'm guessing the problem is with my OS (Ubuntu), not Zotero.