Library gone after using new computer

Hello, I changed my computer recently, and as I downloaded Zotero and Zotero Connector again, I realised that even on my Zotero browser account all my stored ressources are gone! is there any chance to recover my previous library? Who can I contact with this?
Thank you, Julia
  • So they don't show up when you click on My Library here, correct? And you don't have any back-up of your old computer's harddisk?
  • correct, it's empty! I still have the old PC harddisk, but I cannot access it at the moment. I thought, that with my online library I would always have a backup online...

    Could it be that I installed Zotero on my new harddisk and then my online browser library synchronised with the empty one on my computer, thereby deleting everything?
  • No, syncing an empty database would have synced down your copy from the server if you every synced successfully.
    @dstillman can check, but I'd be surprised if you ever had your library synced successfully

    Once you have you can access your old harddisk, we can tell you how to retrieve your database from there. (General instructions here: https://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data#restoring_your_zotero_library_from_a_backup1 )
  • Yes, I'm afraid you never synced (at least to this account), so you would need to restore from a local backup.
  • Thank you @adamsmith and @dstillman for your comments.

    Ok, then I will do so and in case I need your help I'll contact you again. I thought sync would work, since I managed to do the transition from using Zotero only as web application (I did everything in the firefox browser) to a desktop application (Zotero for Windows). So I was able to import my online library to the desktop application. But apparently I missed some important steps in syncronizing Z.
  • You were likely just confused about how Zotero for Firefox worked, I think. It was still a locally-run application, not a web app, running inside the Firefox browser. Zotero for Firefox didn’t connect to any external servers unless you set up sync with it.
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