lost tags

Kevin Harris
Two or three times this has happened to me recently - I've gone to tag a new item (in this case 'loneliness') and using the add button expecting the text to fill out when I type the first few letters, only to find all previous tags for this term have disappeared. Since this collection is about loneliness and isolation, I now have probably a couple of hundred items to go through and re-tag.
I can't explain why it might have happened, but can't see that this problem has occurred previously in the forum.
I do occasionally have unwanted tags come in when adding items using DOI, that are not the correct item (so that I have to delete the item and its associated tags) but normally these seem to be chemical or medical items with no vocabulary in common with mine. Can anyone explain or help? I'm assuming I just have to set an hour or two aside and go through everything. Unfortunate way to end the week but at least I'll be getting familiar with the literature :-)
  • aurimas
    Make sure your Zotero is up to date (4.0.12 for Firefox and 4.0.11 for Standalone). Are you working on the same library on multiple computers?

    Just so we have all the info, what operating system, browser (and version), and what version of Zotero are you using?
  • Kevin Harris
    yes Zotero 4.0.12 in Firefox 24.0, only using one machine. Running Windows 7 (v6.1).
  • Kevin Harris
    I've just discovered that two other tags that I used quite heavily have also been wiped. Spooky. I assume there isn't some kind of limit on the number of items that can be tagged?
  • aurimas
    Do you still have sync enabled even though it's a single machine?

    I don't think we've ever seen this happen (without syncing between two computers, even then.. tags would re-appear rather than disappear) and without knowing how to reproduce this, it will be next to impossible to figure out what caused this.

    See if it happens again. Perhaps you will notice a patern. If this is synced with zotero.org, maybe Dan will be able to see what happened from the server logs.

    And no, there are no limits to the number of tags.
  • adamsmith
    And you have searched for the tags in the tag selector on the bottom left? They're definitely gone?
    http://www.zotero.org/support/collections_and_tags#the_tag_selector
  • Kevin Harris
    yes, I should have said they're definitely gone. Have been trying (failing) to remember what happened last time, a few weeks ago, but it was a minor term so had less impact.
    I'm not sure if sync is enabled but I haven't tried to sync the collection.
    Thanks anyway.
  • aurimas
    You can check is sync is enabled under Preferences -> Sync. Is the "Sync automatically" checkbox checked?
  • Kevin Harris
    yes it is.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    You do not appear to have synced in several months, though, at least to the account you're logged into.

    If you like, you can upload your database to the DB Repair Tool and then post the Upload ID here, and we can take a look at the database. (I wouldn't worry about the download links the tool provides. It's unlikely to fix anything.)

This is an old discussion that has not been active in a long time. Before commenting here, you should strongly consider starting a new discussion instead. If you think the content of this discussion is still relevant, you can link to it from your new discussion.

Sign In or Register to comment.