All Zotero entries for long period last year missing.

shashj
A very large chunk of my Zotero entries (books, articles, etc), imported over the course of last year, are missing. All items added between the 17th January 2011 and 30th November 2011, along with all their notes, are simply gone. I'm using 2.1.10, and have checked my database across the website, Firefox, and standalone Zotero. Any suggestions?

Thank you.
  • dstillman
    On the server I see that 225 items were deleted from your library on January 19th, 2012. Is it possible that those were the items?

    Zotero only syncs explicit deletions, so somehow those items had to have been deleted. (If they were in the trash, it could have happened a month earlier.) I see a few dozen other items were added to the server on that date.

    Do you have a backup of your Zotero data directory from before the 19th (assuming that was when this happened)? If you do, I could clear those deletions from the server, and all your newer items would just sync down.
  • shashj
    Hi Dan,

    Thank you for your response. It's possible that those are the items - is there any way to take a sample of those items (e.g. titles) to check? I have a backup of my library from 9.50am on the 19th - is that prior to those deletions occurring? Else, I'd have to revert to an October backup, which should't be too bad.

    Thanks.
  • dstillman
    It's possible that those are the items - is there any way to take a sample of those items (e.g. titles) to check?
    No, we only have a log of the deletions, not the deleted data itself.
    I have a backup of my library from 9.50am on the 19th - is that prior to those deletions occurring?
    Depends where you're located. The deletions occurred at 08:23 GMT.

    For what it's worth, I see only one item, dated 9/30, with a Date Added between 1/17/2011 and 1/10/2012. So nothing from December 2011 either. Is that not what you see locally?

    If you want me to clear your delete log on the server, I can do so. If you then disable auto-sync in the Sync pane of the Zotero preferences, you can freely experiment with backups to see what's there. You should move the entire Zotero data directory at once, and be sure to operate only on backups of the backups. (If all your attached files aren't on the server, after pulling the recent server data into the backup you can sort the contents of the 'storage' folder in your most recent data directory by date and copy just the recent folders into the backup's 'storage' folder.)
  • shashj
    Yes, that is what I see. I am in GMT, which means I deleted the items in the morning, then unhelpfully backed up the data.

    I will experiment with the backups now, but I have just one question if you don't mind: is moving the "entire Zotero data directory" necessary? Or can I, as per the link in your post, just move the "zotero.sqlite" and "storage" files?

    Please do delete the logs (that can't do any harm - if these aren't the deleted items I need, then I'll just delete them again).

    Many thanks for your time.
  • dstillman
    OK, deletions purged.

    Moving just zotero.sqlite and 'storage' is fine.

    Once you've found a backup that includes as many of the deleted items as possible, perform a sync, and all the items you added to the server since that backup should come down. Whether you'll need to manually copy in subfolders of 'storage' from your most recent data directory depends on whether the files for the recent items are on the server.

    Best of luck.
  • shashj
    Turns out that the Jan deletions couldn't have been the missing files, since they weren't in the October file either. But I did find the missing files (at least most of them) in an earlier, September copy. Thanks very much for your help.
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