Entries from Mendeley import getting trashed/reverted

tina_cardona

Hi there,

I have some strange things going on in one of my group libraries. First, this library's backstory. I imported a large chunk from Mendeley in June 2021 using .ris back before Mendeley changed their apps to not allow transfer of entries with PDFs to My Library (so I could import to Zotero). Then I waited for a while and finally Mendeley allowed this type of copying within Reference Manager, so I moved the rest of my entries to My Library and imported to Zotero in December 2021, this time using the beta build that allowed direct import from Mendeley. I spent many many hours doing QA of all these entries and tagged them with a colored tag when complete so I could keep track of my progress. I finally finished a month or so ago - almost 3,000 entries were ready to go.

The last thing I had to do was move the remaining 80 that had been added to Mendeley since starting QA of the large chunk. I did this yesterday and QA'd them pretty quickly. But once I started QA of larger aspects of the library (e.g., making sure journal names were consistent), I started noticing that my library didn't look right. Some entries that I know for a fact were QA'd and tagged (because all of them were) had reverted back to what they were right after Mendeley import with no QA tag, but it was maybe about 20 or so, no big deal. Then I compared the overall count of the Zotero library with the Mendeley version. It was around 1,200 in Zotero vs. 2,865 in Mendeley. I looked in the group library's Trash and there were over 3,000 entries, most of which were added in December 2019, reverted back to what they were fresh from Mendeley with no QA tag. After a restless night, I came back to try and troubleshoot this morning, and this group library count was now at 1350. I've had auto-sync on this whole time, by the way. I have no subfolders in this library, but when I went to Unfiled Items, the count was 1311, when I went back to the overall library folder it said 1390 entries. It goes back and forth from 1350 to 1390 as I select Unfiled Items and the main folder.

I have no idea how to move forward because now I can't trust that my library is stable. I know for a fact the entire Mendeley library minus the 80 new entries, were all in Zotero and QA'd. I don't know what to do now or what to tell my team. I was ready to release this library for use after so many hours of work across the last year. Any idea what happened or what's going on?

Thanks so much,
Tina

adamsmith

How did you move/add these to Zotero?

The last thing I had to do was move the remaining 80 that had been added to Mendeley since starting QA of the large chunk. I did this yesterday and QA'd them pretty quickly.

tina_cardona

Using the direct-from-Mendeley import.

tina_cardona

I wonder if it moved my Mendeley trash too (2,595 entries), which contains the December 2019 entries I'd previously moved over. I didn't think to clear the trash before making the transfer.

tnajdek

Zotero keeps track of items previously imported from Mendeley and updates these items on re-import. Most likely what happened here was, during re-import, items you've updated in Zotero have been reverted to their version from Mendeley.

There is a chance last automatic backup is still from before the re-import you did yesterday, and you may be able to restore from that.

tina_cardona

Well I literally almost fainted from relief because IT WORKED. I now see there is an option to Replace Online Library so this restored version syncs properly, but the KB page says to ask before doing. What do you think?

tnajdek

Before you override your online library, I'd recommend going to web library, finding the 80 items that your now-reverted library lacks locally, export these to "Zotero RDF". You can then import these items into your, now-recovered library - it's not perfectly lossless but should get you most of your data and changes you did after importing. Then, once you're happy with how everything looks locally, replace your online library and re-enable sync.

tina_cardona

Excellent suggestion - thank you for saving me the time I was about to spend re-importing those 80 items. The fact you guys helped me so quickly meant the backup was still available. THANK YOU!!!

tina_cardona

Let me ask you this - I have about 20 group libraries and assume they will all be affected by replacing the online library with the backup. To avoid overwriting updates others have made, could I export my restored library to Zotero RDF, turn sync back on so that the online version comes back again, then import my restored library that way? Do I need to check the annotation box for tags to export or is that something different? Thanks again.

dstillman

I have about 20 group libraries and assume they will all be affected by replacing the online library with the backup

No, that option lets you select the library to replace.

Export/import is not a backup and shouldn't be used as one — it will reset Date Added/Modified info and break links to citations in word processor documents, and it may be slightly lossy in some other ways. You only want to use it for the 80 items.

tina_cardona

Okay I see that option now. Thanks!