Is my library still there?

tferalio
First time posting so if this gets posted twice, I apologize….

I have been using the Zotero add-in for Firefox for that last few months and it has been great. Unfortunately, I think I may have just made a fatal error. I recently had to generate a new user account and delete the old one on my computer (Windows 7 PC). I assumed that all of my programs would stay intact but it turned out that I had to reinstall the Zotero add-in. I have a feeling that, when I deleted my old user account, I may have blown away my Zotero library because it doesn’t show up in my new installation (both installations used the default file structure). Unfortunately, I did not have the foresight to setup the online backup for my data, therefore, the only hope is that my library is still intact on my hard drive and I just need to link the new installation to it. If there is a good chance that my library is still intact, how do I link it to my new installation? If it is gone forever, is there a way to import the Zotero citations I have saved in the documents I have already written back into Zotero? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
  • RintzeRintze
    By default your Zotero library is stored in the profile directory of Firefox, which (also by default) is coupled to a specific (Windows) user account. If the entire user account has been deleted, then yes, you probably lost your Zotero library as well.

    See http://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data#locating_your_zotero_library for more information.
  • tferalio
    Rintze - Thanks for the reply. After looking at the link you sent I did a little searching and thought I should post the results. After looking at the path in the link I went to C:\Users and, since the user account I had deleted was the original account on the machine, it was still there but empty. While in the C:\Users\’profile_name’ folder, if you right click and select ‘properties’ there is a tab called ‘Previous Version’. I selected this tab and found that, apparently, Windows had backed that file up a few times. I was able to scroll through the backups and find the last one prior to deleting the user account. I did not see C:\Users\’profile_name’\AppData in this folder so I assumed it was a hidden folder. To show it, I clicked on ‘Organize’ in the upper left hand corner and ‘Folder and search options’ from the drop down menu. Under the general tab in this window I checked ‘show all files’ and under the ‘view’ tab I selected ‘show hidden files, folders, and drives’ then clicked ‘OK’. ‘AppData’ was then visible and I was able to navigate to C:\Users’profile_name’\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<randomstring>\zotero and restore my library as described under ‘Restoring your unsynced Zotero library from an backup’ in the link you gave me.

    Thanks for the help, I appreciate it…
  • LECA A-M
    Hi,
    I've deleted files and Zotero was Sync and I don't know why but I can't find my files in the garbage (there are just odl files and I don't know why, too.)
    Can someone help me?
    Sorry for my english.
  • dstillman
    LECA A-M: Start a new thread and provide more details on the problem.
  • LECA A-M
    In fact it's OK, I find the files in "non classified" .
    Thanks

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