Library is gone after log in

hensch
Over the past weeks, I've been constantly filling up my library folder with literature.
Because the department I'm working in has been using Zotero for just a month, our PCs have not been synced yet regarding Zotero.

Since everyone has to be able to access my library folder from his PC, I used the account created for student assistants in order to set it up. Previously, I worked with Zotero without using an account.

So now, after logging in and clicking sync I can access folders of other people who have been working with that account, but my own folder is gone. Is there any way I can restore it and integrate it into the account? My plan is to log in on everyone's PC, so that they can all use the library or make changes.

  • adamsmith
    Sounds like someone deleted the collection -- I doubt you'd be able to restore it, I'm afraid. You should get your own Zotero account, keep the password private, and use that for sync/access
  • hensch
    I don't think someone deleted it, because just before I logged in, the collection was still there. It was gone after Zotero was running on the student assistent account and was synced up with it.
    So does this mean that every collection I build up without using an account gets automatically deleted when I log in?
  • bwiernik
    No, what you are saying sounds like someone on the student account deleted the collection and then this deletion was synced to your computer.
  • hensch
    But how could someone delete the collection if it is stored only on my PC and without it being linked to an account (because as I said, i didn't have an account while I was building the collection)?
    The collection could not possibly appear in the student assistent account so no one except me could have access to it. That is precisely why I logged in, because I wanted everyone to have access to the collection.

    I really hope I'm making sense here, bottom line is that no one deleted the collection (at least not on purpose) and I am trying to find a way to restore because it seems odd to me that a simple sync up command could delete it.
  • adamsmith
    Simple sync will never delete any items or folders in Zotero.
    It's a bit hard to re-construct what happened here. What's the account you synced with, when did you first sync, and what was the name of the deleted collection?
  • hensch
    The account name is "SHK-Account" and the first sync was on February 13th. There were two collection folders, one named "QS-eigene" and the other one named "RatSWD-Paper" (or something like that). Those folders don't appear anywhere as far as I can tell.
  • adamsmith
    @dstillman anything you can see there?
  • hensch
    Any news regarding the account? Btw, thanks for the help so far. I guess there is not a lot of hope for me to restore my data...
  • dstillman
    There were two collection folders, one named "QS-eigene" and the other one named "RatSWD-Paper" (or something like that). Those folders don't appear anywhere as far as I can tell.
    If you look in the library root, do you see items that you created, even if you don't see the collections they were in? The account shows a bunch of items added and synced on February 12th, some more added and synced on January 15, and a couple more on January 8th. Before that there are no items since March 2018.

    If you go to your Zotero data directory, open 'storage', and sort by modification date, do you see folders from before February 12th?
  • hensch
    No, unfortunately not. Strange thing is that the storage folder is completely empty, which it shouldn't be right?
  • dstillman
    Honestly, the most likely scenario here is that you had, in fact, synced the previous account with a different account at some point, and when you went to set it up with the SHK-Account account, Zotero prompted you to switch to that account and delete the existing data. Syncing only ever applies explicit deletions, but switching accounts does involve clearing the local data after prompting.
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