My original College email used as registration is defunct - can not access my zotero account

Julia.M.Volkmann · 2026-02-25T00:01:46+00:00

I created my Zotero account during my masters' studies at the now defunct Goddard College of Plainfield Vermont, using my @goddard.edu email address. Now, when I try to access that body of information which I saved to Zotero, my old credentials no longer work, and Dashlane, my password keeper informs me that the old password was compromised. The @goddard.edu email was part of Goddard's Google academic account serving the entire college community and it was brought down after the college closed, so I can not receive a password reset link there. Any ideas on how I can regain access to my zotero research with my current personal email address?

adamsmith · 2026-02-25T00:41:54+00:00

Is the right account though, i.e. the one your posting with (it's 12 years old so seems likely)?
Because if you can access your settings here, you can just add a new email address and make it primary.
If this isn't the right account and you can't login or receive email to your old account, email support@zotero.org with details & verifying information.

(FWIW, I'm not aware of, nor able to find anything about, any security breach at Zotero, so that message from Dashlane is odd -- I have multiple Zotero accounts saved in Dashlane and have never heard of it)

Julia.M.Volkmann · 2026-02-25T01:29:00+00:00

I checked my profile and it shows both my personal gmail address account (which I used to post the original query here) and my original @goddard.edu email address with which I created the original zotero account. My personal email address is currently set as primary - and I cannot see any of the hundreds of references which i posted. I also see in settings that my storage is 300.5 MB, a mere .5 over the limit for a free account. Now I'm wondering if that's my problem in accessing my files. I see a PURGE STORAGE IN MY LIBRARY button but I'm afraid to press it in the event its a wholesale purge action rather than a selective removal action. Would you know?

adamsmith · 2026-02-25T03:45:39+00:00

Absolutely don't press purge storage.

If your storage is at 300.5MB it just means it's full -- your library could have been multiple times that times -- files above 300MB simply wouldn't have synced, but importantly, metadata (i.e. the actual item information) should have synced.

I'm trying to understand this part "when I try to access that body of information which I saved to Zotero, my old credentials no longer work" -- how/where are you trying to access that information? Do you just mean in the web library here? If so, and you don't see it with this account, I'm not sure it was ever on the server. Zotero is principally a local app and you can use it effectively without syncing or with a sync that's no longer working, which would mean items were only stored on your local computer.

dstillman · 2026-02-25T04:29:15+00:00

(Yeah, just to be extremely clear, there has never been a password breach at Zotero. If you reused passwords between services, Dashlane is just telling you that that email/password combination was found in one of the many publicly known data breaches — not anything having to do with Zotero.)

Julia.M.Volkmann · 2026-02-25T10:41:21+00:00

@adamsmith - thanks for jogging my memory about my information being locally stored rather than on a cloud server. Oddly, I couldn't see any of the many files I saved in Zotero until about an hour ago, and suddenly, all my original folders and files magically (?) appeared. Mystery of mysteries. @dstillman - I'm sorry to cause consternation about my compromised password being a zotero glitch - your explanation makes sense - I retract my earlier statement and will remove it from my original post, if possible. Also, very glad to see that there is a bonafide Zotero Team rep around in the cloud somewhere. Thanks for taking the time to weigh in.