Purging library doesn't work

ThomasAcar
My library was a mess and I wanted to purge it but while my settings say I got 0mb on the site (after purging) my online library is still full and I have to delete everything manually.
  • bwiernik
    You are misunderstanding what that function does.

    What exactly is your problem and what are you trying to do?
  • ThomasAcar
    Thank you for the reply.
    My problem was the following.
    My library wasn't the same on my CPU and on the website. I couldn't update my online library from my CPU (in order to transfer it to another CPU). I didn't suceed in deleting my online library as a whole. I had to delete the papers one by one.
    I did it but if you got a solution for possible future issues it would be great.
    Thank you.
  • bwiernik
    In your situation, you should just use sync to sync your local library to the website. Deleting all your items the way you did is likely going to cause some problems by sending a signal to your local library to delete those items.

    Can you please take a step back and describe exactly what was wrong with your library and what you were trying to fix?
  • ThomasAcar
    In fact. I put my whole bibliography on Zotero but I notice it was too much for my storage capacity. I then tried to supress it in order to import only a part of it but I couldn't because my online zotero library was full whereas my local zotero library was empty. I tried to use sync to sync but it didn't work. Had to delete things manually on the site before importing the needed part on both local and online. I probably made a miEverything is ok now.
    By the way, is there a good way to decrease the storage weight of a bibliography, in order to add more documents ?
  • bwiernik
    Okay, it’s important to distinguish between syncing the item metadata (title, authors, etc.) and the item files. Syncing the metadata doesn’t use your storage at all, and having full storage shouldn’t affect whether item metadata syncs or not. Syncing files does use your storage—once your file storage is full, new files won’t by synced (but changes to existing files will be synced).

    If you purge the files stored online, Zotero will simply try to re-upload other files next time you sync. So, purging does not actually help you to solve your problem. This is why it’s not recommended unless specifically instructed here on the forums.

    If you don’t need to sync any of your files, you can simply disable file syncing in Zotero preferences. This doesn’t impact syncing of item metadata.

    If you want to sync some files but not others for some reason, then you should add the files you want synced like you have been. For files that you don’t want synced, add them as linked attachments instead of stored attachments. Zotero won’t store these files or sync them—it simply opens them from wherever they are stored on your computer.

    A much easier solution would be to increase your available storage space online. You can purchase additional storage space from Zotero quite cheaply from Zotero.org/storage. You can also set up a WebDAV-enabled cloud server to store your attachment files.

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