Lost access to open PDFs when group ownership transferred

dleahy
Hello
I recently took over a portfolio at work from a colleague and had my colleague transfer ownership of a Group Library to myself. However, it seems that following that, neither of us are able to open the pdfs that had been attached to the sources. From the web version, some pdfs show "Open" or "Download". "Open" opens a browser tab and looks to be loading but never loads. "Download" is followed by an Error message: Received error from Zotero server: Not found.
I am hoping all the PDFs are not lost. Any advice?
Thanks
  • dstillman
    This seems like a misunderstanding.

    No files in that group library have ever been uploaded, and the group itself was only created a couple days ago. So nothing was lost when transferring ownership.

    I'm assuming they copied items to the group library from their personal library. If they have the files in the group library on their computer, they would need to sync to upload them, and the group owner (them or you) would need to have enough Zotero Storage space for the files.

    If they don't have the files in the group library on their computer, the files might not have transferred — say, because they were using download-as-needed mode, which currently doesn't automatically download files if you copy items between libraries — but we'd have to know how exactly what they did to say more.
  • dleahy
    Thanks. I really thought the PDFs would open for me initially, but maybe that is impossible based on what you can see.

    My coworker says none of the PDFs are opening from her online library. She doesn't currently have the desktop program, but is it possible that she would have the PDFs available on desktop but not online? I just don't understand how the references obviously had the PDF attached with them (the symbol is there), but now it seems neither her nor I can access them.

    Thanks again.
  • dstillman
    edited October 13, 2022
    The files would be accessible wherever they were accessible previously. They were never in this online library, for anyone.

    I mention above one way that it's possible to transfer attachment items into another library without the attached files (which is arguably a bug, but it's just how it works at the moment when using download-as-needed mode). If she hasn't used the desktop app at all, it wouldn't be that, but we'd just have to know exactly how she transferred items into this library to be able to say more.
  • dstillman
    edited October 13, 2022
    @dleahy: I looked at the other account on the group library. Assuming that's her, she's at her file storage quota, so additional files wouldn't have been uploaded. If she created the items using the desktop app previously (years ago, assuming they came from her library), she would've been receiving a warning on every sync that she was at her quota and files weren't uploading.

    But now she just has many attachment items without files, and when she dragged them, it only transferred the attachment items, not the files, which have never been on Zotero servers.

    The files would still be on the computer where she added them, so if she still has that, she could transfer the items using the desktop app into a group that you own, as long as you have a storage subscription with space for the files. (If you use the same group, you could delete all the items now or wait for the new items and delete the broken set by sorting by Date Added in items list.)
  • dleahy
    Thank you so much for looking into that! I understand now.
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