Upgrade StorageHelp - lost collections and collection tree
Hi all,
I developed over the years a three-level system of collections.
As I was trying to export this entire set of collections to another computer, I lost them. How? I synchronized my library with my weblibrary. For some reason, the collections and collection structure does not synchronize... So, once my library was synchronized, my local Zotero aligned with the web library (in which there were no collections), so got rid of the collections and collection tree.
Are the collections somehow saved in the zotero data folder? Or do you know if there is any way to restore them?
Thanks!
D
I developed over the years a three-level system of collections.
As I was trying to export this entire set of collections to another computer, I lost them. How? I synchronized my library with my weblibrary. For some reason, the collections and collection structure does not synchronize... So, once my library was synchronized, my local Zotero aligned with the web library (in which there were no collections), so got rid of the collections and collection tree.
Are the collections somehow saved in the zotero data folder? Or do you know if there is any way to restore them?
Thanks!
D
I'm not sure what you mean by "trying to export this entire set of collections to another computer". An actual export (e.g., via Zotero RDF to an unrelated library) wouldn't affect the source data, and setting up a new computer by syncing with your current account would just pull down your entire online library on the new computer.
In any case, it looks like you now have a bunch of collections again, created today. But hundreds of items were also deleted. Did you restore from a backup and then use Replace Online Library? That wouldn't have been necessary — you could've restored the collections just by duplicating them and then letting the previous deletions propagate. See the specific step about collections in Restoring Your Zotero Data From a Backup and Overwriting Synced Changes.
(Zotero 7 also sends collections to the trash instead of deleting them immediately, so if you're not using that, you should upgrade to avoid accidental deletions in the future.)
Thanks for the answer, much appreciated. A few minutes ago, my collections reappeared. I just don't know how they disappeared, and how they now reappeared. Just glad I recovered my 100+ collections. I will follow your advice for future, and restore from backups.
D