Notes going missing

wednesdaysouth
After upgrading to firefox 7, and also moving a few sub-collections around, I have noticed that a reference I was working on has had one sub-note replaced with an exact duplicate of another (from the same reference). The original contents of the note have disappeared. I have done a DB integrity check (no errors) and online DBfix (no errors, smaller output DB). Because there were no errors reported, I'm concerned there may be something sinister going on that hasn't been resolved and may be eating my data. Can anyone salve my anxieties?

Thanks,
Jem
  • adamsmith
    Highly unlikely that this would be an actual problem.
    To be safe, make a back-up of your data folder
    http://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data
    (you should also have automated, regular back-ups of that folder as for all your important data).

    My first guess would be a display issue as some people have experienced, you have restarted FF?
    The second best guess for this type of issue is almost always some type of user error - a mistaken copy&paste or the like. This does not sound like a db issue.
  • wednesdaysouth
    Hi, thanks for the reply. I'm feeling a little calmer now.

    I'm fairly sure it wasn't a display issue. User error, you be the judge: I restarted as soon as I saw the duplicates (forgot to check the log), and when restarted all the notes in that reference were garbled (with identical garbled text). That's when I did the integrity check and restarted and that brought back the other notes, but the original loss/duplicate was also back.

    I've recovered the lost note from backups (yes, I do backups), and I haven't lost any references from the total number (seen through select all), but I don't have the technology or patience to check through for other corruptions. I think all I can do is to keep the backups and restore from if I find anything else awry.

    I guess I'm posting because it seemed to me there might be something nasty going on, and these things are best talked about rather than ignored...

    Jem
  • roehlt
    Hi,

    I encountered the same problem as described by the original poster. I use Firefox 7.01 and Zotero 2.1.10 on a Mac (OS X 10.6.8). One original note disappeared and was replaced by a new note I was working on.

    Maybe it is some kind of bug after all? Or is it just a coincidende? Something like this has never happened before (and I'm using Zotero since more than 2 years).

    Fortunately I also have a backup.

    Just wanted to let you know.

    Regards,

    Tobias
  • jenniferwang
    I have also had similar issues. Sometimes when I am undoing (Ctrl+z), the entire note is replaced by another note. Many of my notes were lost because of this, and I was able to recover a lot of them by pressing Ctrl+z (which turned into cycling through many other notes I had looked at) until the correct note reappeared (didn't always happen). This happened months ago, and I recovered most and just rewrote the others. However, it has just happened again and this time, I can't Ctrl+z to find the original note anymore...

    This seems like a weird bug.

    Jennifer
  • dstillman
    edited August 7, 2012
    Sometimes when I am undoing (Ctrl+z), the entire note is replaced by another note.

    However, it has just happened again and this time
    Jennifer: In theory we fixed that (or at least most cases of it) in 3.0.4, which came out at the end of April. What version did you see this in?

    Are you able to provide exact steps to reproduce?
  • jenniferwang
    Hi Dan, thanks for the quick response.

    I didn't realize there was a new version because I haven't used Zotero in a while. The version I'm using is 3.0b2.1.

    The note seems to be replaced by notes that I previously viewed (and maybe made a change to?) when I ctrl+z past any changes on the actual/original note. If I realize what I did, then I can ctrl+y or ctrl+shift+z to redo. Sometimes I was able to ctrl+z until the note reappeared again. But I think if I didn't realize what happened or my changes were not linear (I made changes in between using undo/redo), then I was not able to get the original note back.

    Jennifer
  • dstillman
    edited August 8, 2012
    The version I'm using is 3.0b2.1.
    Yikes. That would be your problem.

    That's an early beta of Zotero 3.0 that's almost a year old.

    Upgrade to 3.0.8, and make sure you have automatic add-on updating turned on.
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