Wafers "dead see scrolls"

Waferx

Good day

I screwed up. Somehow I have now got all my entries being displayed
at the top folder entitled "Wafer Dead see scroll". I do not want that to be
the case as the sub folder structure captures the type of information
that has been captured. In addition I have lost all my subfolder entries in
the Films/CD folder. I did not delete them. I tried to locate a undo feature
but there is not one.

Any way to recover before this happened? A real mass unfortunately.

If any chances that would be great. How do I backup to have a fall back
going forward for a restore if needed?

Tim

dstillman

For at least the first problem, it's possible you just turned on "Show Items from Subcollections" from the View menu.

If you actually moved things by mistake, you can try to restore from one of your last automatic backups and then duplicate any collections, as explained there for the case of accidentally deleted collections.

Waferx

Thks for getting back to me.

I checked "show Items from Subcollections" from the View menu". It is
not check marked. If it was checked and you uncheck it should that folder
not show all the entries? If so it seems to not repond on my Macbook.
I don't believe I moved all my subfolder data to the
top folder as all the subfolders still show most of the data except
the film/movie folder . This subfolder has basically been gutted.

I have a sqlite.bak file in my directory. Is this the file I need to
work with to try and get back to something close to what I had before
this happened?

What a mess.

Waferx

Further when I sign in at Zotero.org some of the subfolders
have not data at all. Something has happened and I know
I did not delete the data. Over a year of data capture would
suggest I would be carful not to delete. Just trying to
understand what happened.

dstillman

I checked "show Items from Subcollections" from the View menu". It is
not check marked. If it was checked and you uncheck it should that folder
not show all the entries?

When checked, it shows items from descendant subcollections when viewing collections further up in the hierarchy. When unchecked, it only shows items explicitly added to the collection you're viewing.

Something has happened and I know
I did not delete the data.

The only way things move around in Zotero is if you move them.

But in your online library, nearly all items modified in the last 6 months were added at the same time — i.e., they're items that haven't changed or moved since they were first added — so I suspect you're misremembering or misunderstanding something here. A handful of items were also deleted a couple weeks ago, but those would've been moved to the trash a month earlier unless you emptied the trash.

I have a sqlite.bak file in my directory. Is this the file I need to
work with to try and get back to something close to what I had before
this happened?

You can make a copy of zotero.sqlite and all the .bak files, temporarily disable auto-sync, and swap in one of the .bak files (using their timestamps to see when they're from), but based on your online library there haven't been any changes here.