Unable to remove group library

anna.l.mueser

I was a part of my advisor's group library but it was taking up too much space on my hard drive. So, my advisor dis-invited me from it and we set up a new one with fewer things in it.

But, the original one is still there on my computer, showing up in my zotero and taking up a huge amount of space. When I log in online, I don't see it anymore. But, on one of my computers, it is still there. On the other computer it vanished like it should have.

How do I get this huge library off of my other computer? It still appears in the sidebar menu and I can still open files from it. I've tried re-syncing my whole zotero, but it's still there on the computer.

I do not want to simply delete it since this contains all of my advisor's work for the last four years or so.

Help!

dstillman

All you should need to do is sync.

On the first sync after you were removed, if you chose to archive the library instead of removing it, you can right-click on it in the left-hand pane and remove the archived group.

anna.l.mueser

Thanks, @dstillman. Unfortunately, Just syncing hasn't worked! When I go into preferences, I don't even see the library that won't disappear. But it is still there in my sidebar and still full of PDFs, which I can still open.

When I right click on the lefth-and panel my options are Sync, New collection, new saved search, and export library.

Any other ideas?

dstillman

If you click Sync in the context menu, you should get a message that you're no longer part of the group, with an option to archive or remove it.

It's possible that if you had previously disabled syncing for the library in the Sync pane it wouldn't have been properly removed. We'll check that.

anna.l.mueser

Thanks! I did, in fact, disable syncing when I was first added, because I realized pretty quickly that it would make an issue. So, then I went back and turned syncing back on, before my advisor removed me from the group--again, hoping that this would make the group disappear when I synced again.

When I click sync in the context menu the little green wheel in the upper right starts turning, but, perhaps because I have zero space left on my hard drive, it doesn't stop turning.

dstillman

If you mean literally zero, can you clear a little space, restart Zotero, and try again?

Otherwise, can you provide a Debug ID for clicking Sync in the context menu?

If necessary, you can right-click on a few files in the group library, choose Show File, and delete them from disk manually.