Cannot purge server items

richard p
6 hours ago went into my account & purged files. Altho showing 0 Mb, there are currently still 5K items in My Library & 2K in trash. I cannot spend all night deleting 25 files at a time & then the same 25 from trash. Please ... a radio button or two would help
  • adamsmith
    Why do you want to do that? There reason there is no option is that there is never any reason to delete everything from the server.

    (Purge deletes files, not items, from the server, as the text under the option says.)
    I'm going to renew my plea: please, please, don't do things you don't fully understand. It was almost certainly not necessary to purge the files. In this case it's mainly your time you're wasting, but still, that's not great, either.
  • aurimas
    Though there are ways to completely clear your online library. I'm not clear on whether you want to clear the online library and keep a local copy (that you are then planning to restore?) or you want to clear your library of everything everywhere.
  • richard p
    Reason being I want a "clean sheet" - since last Fri, I got a "clean" local version on my PC which I synced with server & then synced with PC2 - this left loads of local parents with no attchments/links - I can only ASSUME this is cos the version I synced had numerous missing attachments (missing children) (Aurimus - FYI - I am old fashioned & want all my Zot items linked to pdfs in separate folder). Becuase this was becoming such a mess, I decided to start again, & as far as possible, have only 1 pdf attached to each item. Having F****ed up earlier today, I am repeating exercise to get a completely "clean" local Zot folder on my PC with 0 (well, minimal) duplicates &/or empty links/attachments. I am still working on that, but in meantime, i wish to nuke my server so there can be 0 cross-contamination. So don't worry just my paranoia - but I want Zot to work seamlessly (Ha!)

    But your comments do not answer my initial point - deleting 5K files (sorry, items) 25 at a time is tedious in extreme. The deletion from trash was partly just "good housekeeping". 2nd, IF I "purge" my server space, I do not still want a list of all my old "purged" files/items confronting me when I look at my library on server - I will never know where the F i am.

    Adam - more info - gripes - pissed offness on original post re joy I have had since last Friday.

    Finally - I am doing best I can (see previous post) as I want a pretty basic functionality from Zot - 1) files/attachments that don't just disappear; 2) reliability; 3)seamless syncing. I am NOT getting seamless syncing (& reason I stopped & went manual via backups between PCs some ?12 months ago) - despite the 100 quid I have just spent on server space, I will save that many times over if I don't have all this aggro - hence the wish to start with a clean sheet. I am planning at this point just to get Zot working how I want on my PCs & I will sync manually ... And whilst I am probably the idiot from hell, I still reckon you guys could cut your work by producing a user guide for idiots ...

    Thanks

    R
  • aurimas
    If you have a local library that you are happy with and want to simply upload it to zotero.org "nuking" everything that's currently on the server, go to Preferences -> Sync -> Reset -> Restore to Zotero Server
  • richard p
    Aurimas

    OK - Thanks - I will try that once I get everything working OK on my PC

    R
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