Problem loading subcollection

Hi all,

I've been having with some old subcollections in Zotero.
Basically when I try to view the subcollection or the whole of My Library I get a message saying "Loading items list" ... but I never get to see the list of files. Other subcollections are fine. The problem only refers to one particular one.

On the error console I get the message:
Error: aCreators[aPos] is undefined
Source File: chrome://zotero/content/xpcom/itemTreeView.js
Line: 1180

I submitted an error report with the ID: 1442690828

I assume that there is a bad item on the list, but I'm not sure how to find out which one it is and how to delete/fix it. Any ideas?

Many thanks in advance for the help,
xxx
  • edited November 2, 2011
    Try uploading your database to the DB Repair Tool. Make a note of the Upload ID. If the repaired database doesn't fix the problem, send an e-mail to support@zot....org with the Upload ID and a link to this thread. Don't post the Upload ID publicly.
  • Hi Dan,

    thanks so much for your response. I tried the repair tool and also tried fixing it using sqlite, but nothing seems to have changed. I've emailed support in the end and hope that they will be able to help.

    Many thanks again for the help,
    xxx
  • There's only one collection in the database you uploaded, and the library loads fine for me.

    Perhaps you uploaded the wrong database (or e-mailed the wrong Upload ID)?
  • edited November 3, 2011
    Oh, actually, I just reproduced that error when sorting by creator.

    Switching to a view that works and changing the sort column to Title fixes it for me.

    We'll look into a proper fix. (And still only one collection in that database.)
  • edited November 4, 2011
    Hi Dan,

    thanks for having a look at this.

    The problem occurs with the unfiled items and when I want to view the whole of My Library. The Thesis subcollection is fine (there were other subcollections originally, but I merged them all under Thesis).

    Your suggestion worked, when I sort by Title the problem is also fixed for me! Thanks for this, it's very helpful!

    You've probably noticed this yourself too, but just for the record, if I then re-sort by creator, I get a new error:

    Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "'[JavaScript Error: "bCreators[bPos] is undefined" {file: "chrome://zotero/content/xpcom/itemTreeView.js" line: 1190}]' when calling method: [nsITreeView::cycleHeader]" nsresult: "0x80570021 (NS_ERROR_XPC_JAVASCRIPT_ERROR_WITH_DETAILS)" location: "JS frame :: chrome://global/content/bindings/tree.xml :: onxblclick :: line 1360" data: yes]

    This error affects the way that items are displayed on the right-hand side panel (the Info etc tabs) and the Info tab does not get updated when I move between items (unless I switch to a different tab like Notes and then go back to Info)

    If you have any more insights on what must have caused this or whether there are any specific items that cause the problem, please let me know.

    Many thanks again for the help,
    xxx
  • edited November 4, 2011
    Success!!

    I managed to trace the item that was causing the problem.

    For one of the items (Fiebach et al. 2005) there was an error with the authors' list. The second author entry was empty, which I guess explainS all the trouble with sorting by creator.

    This gave me all sort of problems initially. When I tried to remove either just the empty author entry or the whole item I was getting an error and zotero could not save the changes. Eventually I removed all the author entries and added some new ones. That seemed to work and I managed to delete the listing in the end.

    Everything seems to be working fine now! Not sure what caused this to begin with, since it's been a while since I worked on this collection. It could have been me or some problem during import ...


    Many thanks again for the help and the time spend on this,
    xxx
  • For one of the items (Fiebach et al. 2005) there was an error with the authors' list. The second author entry was empty
    Yep. I actually put in a fix for this yesterday, which will appear in the next 3.0 release. It won't fix the errors from trying to edit creators for such an item, but it should prevent the item from breaking the items list.

    I suspect this resulted from a bug in a much earlier version of Zotero, since we haven't seen anything else like this in quite some time.
  • That's great news! Many thanks for following this up.

    The entry was probably created sometime around 2008, so - yes - a much earlier version of Zotero.

    Many thanks again for the help,
    xxx
Sign In or Register to comment.