Sync not picking up items from other computer

We have been using four computers: the Researchers, the Research Assistants, and each one's travel/backup computer. All have worked well for the past six years. This weekend the Researchers computer did not pick up five items entered by the RA, but the backup computers did so fine. Uninstalled and reinstalled Z after thoroughly running all Windows diagnostics on the Researchers computer. All choices in Z preferences are identical on all computers. Test files entered by the Researcher's computer sync and are picked up by the other computers. But still the researcher's computer fails to pick up those five files.
Any ideas?
  • Is the researcher's computer downloading other new items?
  • Yes, all other functions work fine.
    The above has been tested several times, over different networks.
    Further description:

    Offices are not in the same building. Normally one’s texts the other about files just entered, so response has been rapid.

    The frustration comes when we think we are looking at the same thing. Eventually each looks at the My Library totals and fined they are different. Then the process f identifying what is missing. Once missing items are identified (usually most recent enter my one person), then a work-around must be found.

    Workaround
    Highlight all files that did not transfer. Export them and put that in DropBox. The researcher then imports that group. Then through discussion over phone the research must move or align the files in her computer to match the RAs.

    After syncing again the RAs computer then has a double entries, one set of which must be deleted.

    After a half a day of trying these things the RA entered another test" file, which was picked up by the researchers computer. Still the researchers computer did not pick up the original missing files.

    All the above was followed on one of the backup computers which pciked up everything just fine.


  • edited January 14, 2019
    You definitely don't need to go through all of that. All items should obviously be transferred, and if that's not happening we'll want to debug that, but if you find something hasn't transferred, simply making any change to the original item (e.g., some random text in the Extra field, which you can delete immediately after syncing) and syncing again is likely enough to get the latest version to be pulled down.

    If you can reliably reproduce the problem of adding items and having them not be transferred, we'd want to know the precise steps for that.
  • I tired making the slight changes on the first batch of failures and it still didnt work.
    the was the batch I used the work-around for yesterday. It's late here but I'll try that tomorrow on today's batch of problem files and hope it works.

    I know this is a weird situation. We love Zotero and both train others in using it, but this stumps me.
    Thanks for connecting on this.
  • edited January 14, 2019
    To be clear, you would make a change to an item that hadn't been synced elsewhere, sync the computer where you made that change, and then sync the computer where the item didn't originally appear.

    If you can actually reliably make a change that doesn't sync, that would be great news — see Changes Not Syncing for how to provide debugging information that we could use. But that's very unlikely. It's far more likely that something caused the original items to be missed but that subsequent changes would go through normally.
  • I tried adding a test note to each of the five items that did not sync. They still failed to sync. Then I added a test comment to an item in the information panel. That time it was successful. All computers are now seeing the same library. If the mysterious problem ever occurs again I will attempt to follow the debug process. Thank you for your help.
  • A note is a separate item, so that wouldn't trigger a sync of the original.
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