Upgrade StorageCitations Lost from Library
'm working on a manuscript. I noted over the weekend that the references that I was inserting in the text were not in the reference section. So, I updated and added the bibliography, and my references populated in the reference section, but above the previous references. That was fine, I figured that once I was done that i could rectify it. I continued to work on the manuscript, adding references with no problem. Today, when I went to start working on the manuscript, I am noting that my Zotero library is missing citations from yesterday as well as many of those that were previously there...just yesterday. Nearly 75% of my library is gone, and I am not certain what I did. I know I didn't unlink anything, and I only deleted one duplicate reference. I'm not even sure I can reconstitute the library from scratch because all I have are the authors and year in the text. I am certain that I didn't delete any references, and I didn't unlink any.Is there a fix for this, short of starting over?
Problems with citations or the bibliography getting flattened in a word processor document wouldn't be related to items disappearing from your actual Zotero library.
In your online library, there are a few items in your trash that have been deleted in the last week, but nothing like 75% of your library, and no items have been permanently deleted.
Make sure you're looking in the library root, not just a collection. You can sort by Date Added to see when you added all your items.
I am in the process of drafting a manuscript and all of the citations were from my Zotero library which was (this morning) virtually gone. Again, I don't know what you see, and I can't explain why or even how this happened, but I do know that there were citations that were added within the text and bibliography section of my word document that were present yesterday, but not today. It's more than a little insulting to tell me how many references are not missing when you can't seem to explain or even understand how I managed to add a bibliography in my word document from a library that no longer exists in Zotero. It's inconceivable, I realize, but it happened. My bibliography in Word is proof of that. I spent hours over the weekend on this, and I know what I had when I stopped yesterday and what I had when I started today. They were markedly different.
I'm looking at the delete log in your online library, which would show whether anything was deleted recently, and nothing was. But looking more closely, there's a gap in the creation dates of items from September 2023 until just now, so it seems like you stopped syncing this account. (This is why I said to sort your library by Date Added — this would've been apparent.)
My guess would be that you accidentally deleted your database by mistake from outside Zotero (e.g., by trying to clear disk space), which unfortunately is a fairly common thing people do, and then synced, which pulled down data in your online library up through September 2023. Zotero shows a bright yellow warning banner when you're not syncing, but you could've dismissed that.
See Locating Missing Zotero Data, which explains what to look for in your Zotero data directory to figure out if this is what happened and also how to see if you have a backup. (Though if you've since reconstituted your library and replaced existing citations with new items, it's probably too late.) If you provide the info requested there, we can confirm.