Deleting collections

Zonk117
Okay, I have looked up a lot other post on this issues, but nothing has solved my problem. Everything I time tried to delete a collection my firefox or standalone zotero program would freeze. Now, my whole program is freezing before evening opening, and I can't even get anything out of it. Things I have tried:

1. Reinstalling the whole program. (so I am running the latest Zotero and Firefox)
2. compress/zipping my squilt file (Zotero libray data base)
3. Debugging
4. Clearing my index
5. Almost everything else on the forums I could find

I am getting quite frustrate as i just signed up for Zotero, and I have spent a lot of time organizing everything the way I want it. Please Help!

Using:

Mac 10.10
Yosemite
FireFox: 33.0.3

I have both the standalone and in browser add on for Zotero.
  • aurimas
    How long have you let it run after it freezes up? Give it 5-10 minutes. If it doesn't recover, please post here again.
  • Zonk117
    Application won't even open now. Says "Application Not Responding" I never let is sit that long though. Maybe a minute tops.
  • aurimas
    yeah, just let it work on whatever it's working on. At this point, it's probably a mess of things (though probably syncing upon opening the app)
  • Zonk117
    Okay, application opened, it is giving my the scrolling wheel for about 2 minutes now. It is in the process of trying to delete a collection.
  • aurimas
    Deleting collection and containing items or just the collection? The latter should be pretty quick, so this would be quite surprising. The former might take a little bit depending on the number of items you have in there (for it to take 2 minutes, I would expect thousands of items in the collection).

    Once it recovers, could you submit an error report if available?
  • Zonk117
    Just a collection. If there is anything in it... there are only like one or two items like web pages, but I don't think there is anything. It kinda got done deleting, but the left side (library will scroll up and down, but I can't click on anything or open any collections.
  • aurimas
    Are you able to submit an error report?
  • Zonk117
    Yes, I just did.
  • aurimas
    You need to post the report ID here.
  • Zonk117
    615523205
  • Zonk117
    Did you get that? Just checking.
  • aurimas
    Yes, it will just take some time for someone to check the contents. Will let you know how to proceed shortly.
  • dstillman
    edited November 8, 2014
    [ERROR: too many SQL variables] [QUERY: DELETE FROM collectionItems WHERE collectionID IN (?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?…
    This is a bug, but you appear to have over 25,000 collections in your library. I think the current code will fail if you try to delete a collection with more than a thousand subcollections.

    Your options here are to 1) wait for us to fix this, 2) delete those collections individually (or if they're grouped under smaller subcollections, try to delete those instead), or 3), if you want to start fresh, temporarily disable auto-syncing, close Zotero, delete zotero.sqlite and the 'storage' folder from your Zotero data directory, restart Zotero to an empty library, and then do Restore to Zotero Server from the Sync -> Reset pane of the Zotero preferences to wipe your server library. You could then reenable auto-sync and start again.
  • Zonk117
    edited November 8, 2014
    How long are we looking at waiting for this to be fixed?
  • Zonk117
    I have a lot of collections, but not 25,000 BTW.
  • Zonk117
    If I start afresh, do I have to recreate all of my collections again?
  • dstillman
    How long are we looking at waiting for this to be fixed?
    I can probably fix this in the 4.0 Beta within a day or two, but there are no dev builds for Standalone, so you'd have to install the Firefox version, close Standalone, and do the deletion in Firefox. After that you could switch back to Standalone. (Again, this is once the fix is in the beta.)
    I have a lot of collections, but not 25,000 BTW.
    You have over 25,000 in your account online.
    If I start afresh, do I have to recreate all of my collections again?
    Well, yes, by definition.
  • dstillman
    Though it seems like these were almost certainly from some number of imports — and possibly duplicate imports. There's no way you created 25,000 collections by hand. So you could repeat that — once, and perhaps cleaned up.
  • Zonk117
    Interesting. Thank you for the help!
  • Zonk117
    Wait, one more thing. Can I delete them on my online account? How can you see my collections online?
  • dstillman
    You could try deleting them online. Not sure what will happen. You won't get the same error, but it might time out. Worth a shot.
    How can you see my collections online?
    Not sure what your question is, exactly. Your data is online because you've synced. I'm an admin, and I can look at basic library stats to help with debugging.
  • Zonk117
    I can't see my collections online. I want to try to delete a lot of collections online
  • dstillman
    edited November 8, 2014
    Oh, yeah, actually there's approximately zero chance that that many collections will load online. Sorry.

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