Zotero backup - files from different collections

marinatmendes

Hi, I've been reading some discussions around backing zotero. I've found you have best practices to do this (here: https://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data#locating_your_zotero_data) and do not recommend exporting the folders.
But the files come in a single folder (named storage). The thing is I have different collections for different purposes and I want to differentiate them in a simple way, I mean save the files of a single collection and not from all collections and mixed up. Is there any way to do it?
Thank you for your support.

adamsmith

No. But could you say why that's important to you in a backup?

marinatmendes

Because I work for entities A and B and only B asks me to do a backup. And this way I'll have references from both mixed up.
First of all, I started with the exporting option but an error is generated related to two specific folders. When exporting folder by folder, I cannot export these 2, the remaining can be exported. That's why I came to the forum, to try to understand why the error is coming up.
Any other thougths?

dstillman

We can look at the error if you report that with a Report ID in a separate thread, but an export is not a backup and isn't meant to be used that way.

marinatmendes

Report ID: 1983340703

I understand your recommendation, it is helpful, but I need to differentiate the files of each collection.

Thank you

marinatmendes

dstillman are you able to help and identify the generated error?
I need to understand why is it happening.
Thank you

dstillman

[JavaScript Error: "Component returned failure code: 0x80520012 (NS_ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND) [nsIFile.copyTo]" {file: "chrome://zotero/content/xpcom/translation/translate_item.js" line: 1210}]

Can you provide a Debug ID (different from a Report ID) for an export that produces the error?

marinatmendes

debug ID: D1070719403
thanks for your help!

dstillman

If you use Help → Debug Output Logging → View Output while attempting the export, you can see an error near the end with a very long path. I'm not sure if that's the path of a file in your library or the path you're trying to export to, but either way it's very long, and combined with the filename you may be hitting a Windows file path limit. You should either export to a folder much higher up in your fileystem, or if it's a specific file, delete the file or exclude it from the export. If the latter and you're not sure what file this is for, you can repeatedly halve the export until you identify the file that triggers it.