Zotero profile not loading, need help fixing that and also help moving attachments

hilary.kraus
I have created a big mess and would be grateful for help extricating myself from it. This is the end result of getting a new home laptop, a new job, and then a new work laptop all in the same six month period. I take full responsibility for the disaster I seem to have created. Here's the background:

I have two Zotero accounts.

Account 1: for my personal research, associated with my Gmail account, uses ZotFile to reroute my files to OneDrive.
Account 2: a demo account I use to teach library patrons to use Zotero (the irony here is not lost on me), associated with my university email, syncing to Zotero.org.

On my home laptop, where I'm only using account 1, Zotero loads fine and my data seems good. I did notice that some things I imported using my work laptop have somehow saved on my work laptop locally, rather than in OneDrive, not totally sure why since ZotFile still seems to be running. I can resolve these eventually (although it will probably take awhile unless there's a good plug-in for identifying missing files) ... provided I can fix whatever is preventing account 1 from loading on my work laptop.

On my work laptop, I have two profiles set up, for accounts 1 and 2, with the pop-up set to ask me which profile I want to use each time. This worked for months, with both profiles loading fine. Account 2 still is perfectly ok here. Account 1 was getting slower and slower to load, and now just hangs and won't load data at all.

Goals:

Figure out why Zotero account 1's profile isn't working on my work laptop and fix it.
Find and resolve the missing attachments in account 1.
Move all my account 1 attachments to Zotero.org from OneDrive, including the files that seem to have been unintentionally orphaned in my work C drive.

I am willing to delete profiles, uninstall and reinstall software, etc. as needed, but I'm not sure where to start. I believe I have successfully backed up all my data (any Zotero directories I could find on either computer, including zotero.sqlite, storage, and subfolders), so it should be relatively safe to start attempting fixes. I hope.

Thanks in advance for your help!
  • adamsmith
    None of this sounds like you're doing or did anything that should break Zotero.
    For this (which seems to be the main problem, we can worry about everything else later)
    Account 1 was getting slower and slower to load, and now just hangs and won't load data at all.
    1. How long have you let it run?
    2. Can you still get into the preferences? If so could you try checking database integrity from the Advanced Tab of the preferences?
    3. Do your menus still work, if so, could you provide
    a) an error Report ID and
    b) a Debug ID covering about 1 minute of Zotero trying to load
  • hilary.kraus
    Thanks so much for the speedy reply! I'm feeling a bit better knowing you don't think I've descended into a Zotero nightmare of my own making.

    In response to your questions:
    1. I ran a stopwatch while I followed your other steps. It took about 11 minutes for the data to appear, but it did eventually load. This is the longest I've waited, I think I usually gave up at about 3 minutes, so at least I know the info is there now!
    2. I was able to access my preferences and checked database integrity. It says I passed and no errors were found in the database.
    3a. Error report ID: 811855665
    3b. Since the data had already loaded, I followed the instructions to restart with logging enabled, let it restart, and got this Debug ID: D1562319754. On this attempt, the folders in my library loaded pretty quickly, but the items still hung up for over 10 minutes before they loaded.
  • adamsmith
    @dstillman can you see anything in the debug or error report?
  • dstillman
    @hilary.kraus: The debug output has to actually show the delay you're reporting. You appear to have submitted this right at startup.
  • hilary.kraus
    @dstillman @adamsmith I am thrilled (if boggled) to report that I can't give you a better debug or error report for this, because after well over a week of hanging for seemingly forever upon startup, the profile is now loading fine. I have no idea what improved the situation, especially since I replicated it twice the day I sent the error report, but here we are in a better place. Happy Friday!

    Remaining question:
    I'd like to undo my ZotFile setup to:
    1. Move all the items stored in my OneDrive per my ZotFile settings to the default directory to and ensure they're synced with Zotero.org.
    2. Sync the existing files that are on my computer in the default Zotero storage folder with Zotero.org. (Not sure how they got stored there given ZotFile, but they're definitely there, and of course not syncing with Zotero.org because I turned off that setting when I set up ZotFile.)

    Since I'm sure I'll be well over the free storage limit if all that syncing is successful, should I set up my storage account before I try syncing?

    Thanks again!
  • dstillman
    You can use Tools → Manage Attachments → Convert Linked Files to Stored Files for this.
    Since I'm sure I'll be well over the free storage limit if all that syncing is successful, should I set up my storage account before I try syncing?
    Doesn't matter. Fine to upgrade only once you hit the limit.
  • hilary.kraus
    edited October 24, 2022
    Ok, I followed that instruction, and it seems to have turned all my linked files into stored files. Success! I then went to ZotFile Preferences and set the Location of Files back to "Attach stored copy of file(s)." When Zotero attempted to sync, I got the following error:

    Error for operation 'open' for C:\Users\hik20001\Zotero\storage\I7FE7HEV\ZoteroFilesOnOneDrive: Win error 5 during operation open on file C:\Users\hik20001\Zotero\storage\I7FE7HEV\ZoteroFilesOnOneDrive (Access is denied.)

    The report ID is 1462138511

    I followed the Debug Output Logging instructions (turn on debug logging, repeat the action) and got the following Debug ID: D574804203. (In case that's helpful.)

    This is the big concern I had initially: some files are stored in OneDrive, others on my C drive, and theoretically changing them to local vs. linked files should put them in the standard storage location on C, I'm not sure that's quite what is happening. This may be the "big mess" I thought I'd created in action.

    Thanks so much for all this help!
  • adamsmith
    Can you check this location?
    C:\Users\hik20001\Zotero\storage\I7FE7HEV\ZoteroFilesOnOneDrive
    What's in there?
    Because this doesn't look right -- that looks like your entire OneDrive-Zotero content got moved into a single item's Zotero storage directory.
  • hilary.kraus
    Yes, there are a ton of files in there, and I wonder if it has to do with something I did wrong when moving/backing up files/changing settings when I did the big computer swap.

    After undoing my ZotFile preferences, I remembered to set file syncing to "Sync attachment files in My Library using Zotero," but I just remembered there might be some other settings relating to file locations in Advanced --> Files & Folders. I looked there, and my base directory is set to OneDrive (C:\Users\hik20001\OneDrive - University of Connecticut\ZoteroFilesOnOneDrive), which I'm guessing is something I did when setting up ZotFile at some point. My data directory is the Default. Should I try changing my Linked Attachment Base Directory back to "Revert to Absolute Paths"? Is that related to all this?
  • adamsmith
    When you put I7FE7HEV into the Zotero search bar in "All fields and tags" mode -- what if anything comes up?
  • hilary.kraus
    Just one reference with 8 attachments and a note! (There were a lot of appendices to that article.)
  • hilary.kraus
    And a lot of spot-checking shows files living in the storage folders I would expect, not the I7FE7HEV subdirectory.
  • adamsmith
    OK, try moving the entire ZoteroFilesOnOneDrive folder out of that directory (don't delete it in case it still has files you need and that aren't elsewhere) and see if you can then sync.
    It's a complete mystery to me how this would have happened, but as long as we can fix it....
  • hilary.kraus
    Testing that now!
  • hilary.kraus
    It told me I hit my storage limit, which seems promising. I'm going to upgrade my storage and try again.
  • hilary.kraus
    I think it worked! Truly incredible tech support, 11/10. I can't thank you enough. Out of curiosity, is there a way to know exactly how many file attachments (not necessarily notes, but documents, especially PDFs) are in your web library? I often get asked about how much storage people should expect to need, and I would love to know how many files I have that works out to about 3.4 GB.
  • hilary.kraus
    Oh, finally, do I need to revert my linked attachment base directory? Or is that irrelevant, since I'm no longer using a linked file strategy?
  • dstillman
    Easiest is just to do a search using your OS for PDF files within the 'storage' folder of your Zotero data directory and see how many results there are.

    Linked Attachment Base Directory wouldn't be relevant if you're using stored files but no reason not to reset it.
  • hilary.kraus
    Thanks! All set. You both have been incredibly helpful and patient and I'm very grateful.
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