Group Library not Syncing Correctly between local and online server
Hi there,
I apologize if this has been answered somewhere else, but I can't seem to figure it out. Excuse me for the long explanation.
I have a group library shared with a few other researchers managing thousands of papers. We had separated our collections by which Data Base we pulled them from (ie; PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science etc). At some point someone deleted a collection and all of the papers became "unfiled". All computers synced, so our sorting was gone. We were able to re-sort by searching by which "Library Catalog" it came from. These searches were saved, and then re-filed in new collections. (This was a feat, as the collections would not properly load; there would be 2000 papers in the "saved" file, yet only 500, or 300 etc etc would load when we attempted to move them to a "collection".
I finally managed to get this worked out. And then I made the mistake of deleting a "collection" that had only saved a portion of the saved papers. I managed to delete not only the collection, but also the papers within the collection. (ie, I deleted uneeded collection "Pubmed1" because it only had 1700 papers in it, attempting to leave Pubmed2 as the needed collection with the full 2000 papers). This was my mistake, as when I deleted the Pubmed1 file, it also deleted the 1700 papers out of PubMed2.
I had a colleague disconnect her internet and turn off syncing, and had her restore her local data to the online server (sync- reset - restore to online library). I also had her keep a dated version of the local data from the directory, so we do have the needed data saved.
What is strange is that her standalone version has the correct number of articles, yet nothing is syncing correctly to the online library, or other colleague's standalone. Example: Pubmed is empty on my local Zotero, has 330 on the online server, and is showing up as 2000 in my colleague's).
I have no clue how to precede, as we just need my colleague's local data to overwrite the online version (which we have tried to do on multiple occasions).
Any advice would be very much appreciated - so much time has gone into reading forums and attempting to sort this out on our own, and we really need to move forward with other portions of this project.
Best,
Kaitlyn
I apologize if this has been answered somewhere else, but I can't seem to figure it out. Excuse me for the long explanation.
I have a group library shared with a few other researchers managing thousands of papers. We had separated our collections by which Data Base we pulled them from (ie; PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science etc). At some point someone deleted a collection and all of the papers became "unfiled". All computers synced, so our sorting was gone. We were able to re-sort by searching by which "Library Catalog" it came from. These searches were saved, and then re-filed in new collections. (This was a feat, as the collections would not properly load; there would be 2000 papers in the "saved" file, yet only 500, or 300 etc etc would load when we attempted to move them to a "collection".
I finally managed to get this worked out. And then I made the mistake of deleting a "collection" that had only saved a portion of the saved papers. I managed to delete not only the collection, but also the papers within the collection. (ie, I deleted uneeded collection "Pubmed1" because it only had 1700 papers in it, attempting to leave Pubmed2 as the needed collection with the full 2000 papers). This was my mistake, as when I deleted the Pubmed1 file, it also deleted the 1700 papers out of PubMed2.
I had a colleague disconnect her internet and turn off syncing, and had her restore her local data to the online server (sync- reset - restore to online library). I also had her keep a dated version of the local data from the directory, so we do have the needed data saved.
What is strange is that her standalone version has the correct number of articles, yet nothing is syncing correctly to the online library, or other colleague's standalone. Example: Pubmed is empty on my local Zotero, has 330 on the online server, and is showing up as 2000 in my colleague's).
I have no clue how to precede, as we just need my colleague's local data to overwrite the online version (which we have tried to do on multiple occasions).
Any advice would be very much appreciated - so much time has gone into reading forums and attempting to sort this out on our own, and we really need to move forward with other portions of this project.
Best,
Kaitlyn
(Among other things, adamsmith doesn't work for Zotero and is volunteering his time to help you.) Ignore the other computers for now — all that matters is what you see on the computer you're syncing and the online library.
You're saying that if your colleague does Restore to Online Library and lets it complete, the online library doesn't mirror her local library? If not, can you provide a Debug ID for that operation, as well as example of something that's not uploaded correctly?
I am the colleague who has the standalone version with the correct number of articles. The DeBug ID is D1923603496.
Thank you for your help.
2) You didn't provide an example of something that's not uploaded.
The debug ID now is D254970998.
My Zotero will still not sync properly - my Pubmed Folder is showing 0 articles, while the online library is showing 1993. Do you have any recommendations as to what I should do in order to resolve this issue?
If not, see Changes Not Syncing.
If so, we'd want to see a Debug ID for you making a change online to one of the items in the PubMed collection and then syncing (which should happen automatically within a few seconds as long as you have auto-sync enabled).
1) The changes previously made on the group library will not sync to my standalone (PubMed folder has 0 on my standalone, while 1993 online). This is also true for Agricola 10.16.17 and Agricola 11.07.17.
2) I added a folder online to the group library "SYNC TEST" - this automatically synced to my standalone- I deleted it online, and it disappeared from my standalone.
3) Debug Report: D2076957602.
I added a subcollection to my PubMed collection called "SYNC TEST2" - I added three articles to said subcollection. The subcollection "SYNC TEST2" synced to my standalone, but is completely empty. (Subcollection SYNC TEST2 contains 3 articles online and 0 on my standalone).
Do you see the items in the library root? If so, and you check what collections one of them is in, is that new collection highlighted?
If you click back on the collection after being in another collection, do you see the items? What about if you restart Zotero?
2) Of the three articles I moved to SYNC TEST2 only one shows up in the library root- the new collection is not highlighted when I check which collections it is in (only PubMedTest is highlighted).
3) Items still aren't there when I click into another collection and out. Restarting Zotero didn't help. Restarted computer and relaunched Zotero, and there still aren't any items in PubMed or SYNC TEST2.
4) Just for reference the online group library shows 9307 items, while my standalone says there are 7314.
P8232KTC ("SYNC TEST 2"), with parent collection MCTULRA2
And I see three items:
RPBQM3NN
V4F3BH7T
CKX8PU3C
All three items existed in the local database already, all three were downloaded as being in both P8232KTC and MCTULRA2, and all three were added to collection P8232KTC during the sync process.
So, something is very weird here if that doesn't reflect what you're seeing.
Can you check your database integrity from the Advanced → Files and Folders pane of the Zotero preferences?
If that passes, go to the root of group library and paste those three item keys into the search bar, one at a time, and check whether the items show up in the list.
If they don't, and you sort your library by Date Modified descending, what is the most recent time that an item shows as being modified in your library?
2) Couldn't find items.
3) The last time anything was modified was 02/05/2018, 11:39:23 PM
Just to be clear, I was supposed to search directly for:?
"RPBQM3NN"
"V4F3BH7T"
"CKX8PU3C"
I surely hope I am searching in the correct library, otherwise this is an extreme waste of both of our time (and quite embarrassing).
So what's happening here is that the items are all being downloaded and added to the collections as they should be, but they're all still in the trash, and even though the items in the online library are marked as non-deleted, they're not being removed from the trash on sync. To fix this, you can go to the trash, select all the items you want to restore, right-click, and choose Restore to Library. After a little while (during which it might not look like it's doing anything), the items will disappear from the trash and reappear in your collections.
We'll look into why the items aren't being removed from the trash properly during the sync.
Before I restore items from the trash.... There are over 5000 items in the trash at the moment. Is there a way to sort by which collection they were deleted from? Or should I just be restoring all of the items?
My ultimate goal is for my standalone to be looking at the same as the online version.