My Zotero has MS Word schizophrenia - please help!

troelsjoh

Dear community,
I have suddenly encountered a strange problem that is setting me back weeks in my work. If I open an old (approx. 1 month) MS Word document and add a citation in the text, Zotero can find all my normal citations without problems. But if I make a new MS Word document and try to add a citation, Zotero only finds the references I added over the last couple of weeks. It would seem that Zotero is looking two different places for the citations but I can only find one folder with zotero.sqlite files on my PC when I search the harddrive. To make it even more strange, if I log on to the Zotero website and look in my Web Library I find a whole different set of my much older references but nothing from the last five years.
I will be eternally grateful if someone can help me locate my normal citations and make them accessible in new MS Word documents!
Best wishes,
Troels

troelsjoh

By the way: I just upgraded to Zotero 6.02

adamsmith

When you open Zotero locally and look in the software itself, do you see your library in full?

troelsjoh

Hi adamsmith, No if I do that I only see the most recent references.

troelsjoh

I think it may be that the old references have been deleted from my Zotero library but in my older documents Zotero can find them because they are already cited in the document?

adamsmith

yes, that'd be the case. Have you done anything unusual with your computer recently? Changed computer? Storage clean-up? Anything else?

troelsjoh

Only that I updated Zotero I think. I think my big mistake was that I was never logged into my Zotero account on the desktop Zotero app.
I have now made a partial rescue by using the Reference Extractor (https://rintze.zelle.me/ref-extractor/) on one of my older files that has most of my critical references (100+) and imported them into my library (and logged in now). I will be sure to send Rintze Zelle some Ko-Fi money! @adamsmith: thanks for answering to my question