What notes are you referring to? Can you provide a screenshot (here or in an email to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread) that shows what you mean?
Sorry ... I will follow this up when I have a more definite example. I think the book I was looking up did not have notes before. Sorry to be mistaken and thanks for swift response. If this arises again i will ask again. Thank you.
My main Zotero shows there are no attachments and no notes AND NO ATTACHMENTS for the entry highlighted by Alexander, Luke's Preface. This is the first screen shot. however across the top are the tabs connecting to recently accessed attachments. When I click on that tab it opens the attachment I added to this entry which was there before the upgrade to Zotero 7 but is now missing.
The second screen shot shows the attachment under that tap which should be there in the entry for this item. At the bottom it shows that I downloaded the attachment to Zotero in 2020.
It looks as if all the attachments and notes over ten years of using Zotero have disappeared. Help!
I fear I cannot paste the jpegs. I will send them to support
They're just different items. You can see in the first screenshot that the Date Added for that item is August 14, 2025, so clearly that's not the item with an attachment from 2020.
It looks like you imported a whole batch of items on August 14th and again on August 27th. Only you would know what that was from, but if those are all duplicates and you haven't used them for anything else, you should sort by Date Added and delete those sets of items.
(Also note that you've customized your columns. By default there's an Attachments column that shows you whether there's an attached file.)
None of this would have anything to do with Zotero 7, which just opens your existing database.
I have now found where I can find all my notes and attachments!! Thank you!!! Zotero triumphs again.
Now the explanation. I am publishing my (British) PhD thesis with an American publisher who requires a different format for my whole bibliography. With the help of my son (and Chat GPT) I downloaded my Bibliography from my thesis into Zotero thus creating new entries for each item. I then created a new bibliograpohy list in the correct American style. All was done within one session in August.
I have since been adding 'Short Titles' and am now using those 'Short Titles' in preparing the typescript for the publisher.
I had supposed that they would 'merge' into the entries that were already there in Zotero but they clearly haven't. When I look at my whole library, there are now multiple entries for the same item.
I don't at the moment want to delete those entries from August as they are the ones that contain my Short Titles. If, however, I want to track down the notes or attachments I can look for that item in my overall library.
Should I need help again, I know where to turn. Thanks for the assistance today. I am very pleased at the explanation.
OK, just to be clear, you would almost never want to duplicate items. One of the main benefits of a citation manager is that you should be able to generate output in different citation styles from the same items. If you need non-standard output, you can modify the style.
Before submitting my thesis I detached my typescript from Zotero. I then updated the bibliography further manually.
In order to change the style of all the entries I managed with the help of Chat Gpt to copy and paste the entire bibliography list into a new folder in Zotero. That then meant I was able to create a bibliography in the new style with all the items in that new folder. It saved an immense amount of time.
All those items were already in other folders. It appears that the new list, however, regarded all those items as new records. I think that's what has resulted in duplicates.
Again, though, this would almost never be something you would want to do. While you can make changes after using Unlink Citations, that should generally only be for complicated tweaks that can't be accomplished in other ways. Almost all changes should be made either by editing the item in Zotero or by customizing the citation:
I read the above so that unlink citations was done in the original document without a back-up, so once a change in reference style was needed, some brute force option was the only way to go. If that's the case, not much to do now, but for future reference, you always want to unlink citations in a copy of the document so you have a version with active Zotero citations.
You can merge duplicates, but currently only one by one:
Upgrade Storage
What notes are you referring to? Can you provide a screenshot (here or in an email to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread) that shows what you mean?
The second screen shot shows the attachment under that tap which should be there in the entry for this item. At the bottom it shows that I downloaded the attachment to Zotero in 2020.
It looks as if all the attachments and notes over ten years of using Zotero have disappeared. Help!
I fear I cannot paste the jpegs. I will send them to support
It looks like you imported a whole batch of items on August 14th and again on August 27th. Only you would know what that was from, but if those are all duplicates and you haven't used them for anything else, you should sort by Date Added and delete those sets of items.
(Also note that you've customized your columns. By default there's an Attachments column that shows you whether there's an attached file.)
None of this would have anything to do with Zotero 7, which just opens your existing database.
I have now found where I can find all my notes and attachments!! Thank you!!! Zotero triumphs again.
Now the explanation. I am publishing my (British) PhD thesis with an American publisher who requires a different format for my whole bibliography. With the help of my son (and Chat GPT) I downloaded my Bibliography from my thesis into Zotero thus creating new entries for each item. I then created a new bibliograpohy list in the correct American style. All was done within one session in August.
I have since been adding 'Short Titles' and am now using those 'Short Titles' in preparing the typescript for the publisher.
I had supposed that they would 'merge' into the entries that were already there in Zotero but they clearly haven't. When I look at my whole library, there are now multiple entries for the same item.
I don't at the moment want to delete those entries from August as they are the ones that contain my Short Titles. If, however, I want to track down the notes or attachments I can look for that item in my overall library.
Should I need help again, I know where to turn. Thanks for the assistance today. I am very pleased at the explanation.
Before submitting my thesis I detached my typescript from Zotero. I then updated the bibliography further manually.
In order to change the style of all the entries I managed with the help of Chat Gpt to copy and paste the entire bibliography list into a new folder in Zotero. That then meant I was able to create a bibliography in the new style with all the items in that new folder. It saved an immense amount of time.
All those items were already in other folders. It appears that the new list, however, regarded all those items as new records. I think that's what has resulted in duplicates.
Is there any way of merging duplicates?
Again, though, this would almost never be something you would want to do. While you can make changes after using Unlink Citations, that should generally only be for complicated tweaks that can't be accomplished in other ways. Almost all changes should be made either by editing the item in Zotero or by customizing the citation:
https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_usage#customizing_cites
You can merge duplicates, but currently only one by one:
https://www.zotero.org/support/duplicate_detection