Upgrade Storagefirefox behind the scenes fiasco
About five years ago I switched from Firefox to Chrome, and started using Zotero stand-alone.
Recently I've had to cut back on applications I don't use as my hard drive is getting too crowded. So I deleted Firefox, but kept Safari and Chrome.
A couple days later I went to open Zotero and the entire library is gone. I searched high and low but it's pretty hard to hide more than a thousand pdfs, and they are nowhere on my computer. Which says to me that Zotero was continuing to store things under Firefox all along. I just didn't realize it, and I dumped it all.
Mea culpa: I should have realized it. Luckily the entire database and all the pdfs are still there in my zotero.org library, but I'm unsure how to proceed at this point. Can I reverse sync, and download everything into Zotero stand-alone? I'm hoping this is possible.
Any suggestions much appreciated.
Recently I've had to cut back on applications I don't use as my hard drive is getting too crowded. So I deleted Firefox, but kept Safari and Chrome.
A couple days later I went to open Zotero and the entire library is gone. I searched high and low but it's pretty hard to hide more than a thousand pdfs, and they are nowhere on my computer. Which says to me that Zotero was continuing to store things under Firefox all along. I just didn't realize it, and I dumped it all.
Mea culpa: I should have realized it. Luckily the entire database and all the pdfs are still there in my zotero.org library, but I'm unsure how to proceed at this point. Can I reverse sync, and download everything into Zotero stand-alone? I'm hoping this is possible.
Any suggestions much appreciated.
If this is a large library, I'd recommend setting this up over night. Recently, large syncs have on occasion taken a lot of time.
Firefox should also have prompted you to ask whether you want to delete your Firefox profile when you uninstalled it, but that's obviously not a very helpful warning if you weren't aware that this profile included your Zotero data.
@dstillman, are there any plans to eventually move existing data directories out of Firefox profile folders, since Zotero for Firefox is going the way of the dodo? (especially since you were already planning to move some data directories: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/262845/#Comment_262845)
I just noticed that https://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data#default_locations already lists the default locations for Zotero 5.0, which I assume will also be the migration targets. (by the way, maybe you'd want to change "Windows 7/Vista" to "Windows 7 and higher" throughout the wiki? You're missing out on Windows 8 and 10)
During the upgrade process ("Data directories are automatically migrated out of the Firefox profile in 5.0 (on all platforms)."), is the user explicitly made aware of the data directory migration and the old and new locations? That would help users understand that following their upgrade to Zotero Standalone 5.0 and data directory migration, it is safe to delete Firefox and their Firefox profile. And, if they had a backup strategy specific to their old Zotero data directory location, that they need to change that too.
It's only if the migration fails that s/he gets other information.