"This item no longer exists in your Zotero database"

dcroxton
I'm having a problem with the 2.1.6 version of the plugin (Firefox on Ubuntu 10.10). After upgrading from 2.1.5, it upgrades my database and says everything went fine. However, when I go to add or edit a citation, it then goes back to the first citation in my book and gives me the following message:

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This item no longer exists in your Zotero database. Do you want to select a substitute item?

Clicking "No" will delete the field codes for citations containing this item, preserving the citation text but deleting it from your bibliography.
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The item actually does exist, but, from what I can tell by poking around in the sqlite database, for some reason Zotero has moved the old item to the deletedItems table and created a new one with a different key -- which would be fine, if only it would update the references in my book as well! I don't get this error for absolutely every citation I already have, but I do get it for a lot of them. Way too many to want to go back and fix them all by hand.

I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone else with this error. Can anyone shed any light on my problem and how to fix it? (For the moment, I have been able to go back to 2.1.5 and use a backup copy of the database, but eventually I will want to upgrade to the latest version.)

Sincerely,
Derek
  • dstillman
    for some reason Zotero has moved the old item to the deletedItems table and created a new one with a different key -- which would be fine, if only it would update the references in my book as well!
    Zotero doesn't do anything like this by itself. This can really only happen if you had multiple copies of items on different computers (e.g., from exporting via Zotero RDF or exporting two Zotero 1.0 databases separately) and deleted some and then synced.
  • dstillman
    Also, wait:
    After upgrading from 2.1.5, it upgrades my database and says everything went fine.
    What do you mean by this? 2.1.6 does not perform a database upgrade. None of the 2.1 point releases have.
  • tinn12
    I'm having the same problem. Not technical enough to understand why -- Any time I try to edit a document that has old zotero citations in it, it asks me to replace each of them individually because the item no longer exists in the database.
  • mmadams
    I am having the exact same problem too. Just reinstalled 2.1.6 and it seems to have solved the problem.
  • dcroxton
    I'm not exactly sure what version my old database was in, but checking the version table, it shows system=29 and userdata=73. When I copy that database into a Zotero installation at version 2.1.5 or 2.1.6, it asks me to upgrade.

    I may have figured out what's going wrong. Somewhere along the line, Zotero added an option to clean out deleted items that are older than a certain date. It defaults this option to "on" and the time limit to 30 days. Apparently some of my items were alive and well in the trash, but were getting removed automatically when this option turned on.

    The frustrating thing is that the reason for these items moving to the trash is that the sync process caused me to have a huge number of duplicates at some point. I just deleted the duplicates, without thinking that it would cause some of my references to break (which, actually, it didn't until the trash was cleaned out). Not that I would have had any way of knowing which of the duplicate items to delete in any case.

    Sincerely,
    Derek
  • dstillman
    OK, 73 would have been Zotero 2.0. Upgrading from 2.0 to 2.1 would definitely upgrade your database, but it sounds like that wasn't the issue anyway. Auto-emptying of items older than 30 days was added in 2.1, so your explanation sounds about right.
    The frustrating thing is that the reason for these items moving to the trash is that the sync process caused me to have a huge number of duplicates at some point.
    The only way to get duplicates is as I described above: if you separately upgrade two Zotero 1.0 databases with the same items or export items to another computer and sync those to the same account. In normal usage, there's no way for Zotero to create duplicates.

    When Zotero has duplicate detection and management, it will store references to the old versions so that existing documents don't break.
  • khairulanwar
    Today I also facing this problem. It happen after I try to cite multiple source. Now I can't cite at any place in the effected document. I try cites in other document no error appear. So, thats mean it happen in this document only.I have the debugging report generated by zotero but can't post it here coz it's too long. but have report this to zotero thru zotero panel.
  • janske80
    Hi all,
    I also ran into this same problem after updating to Zotero 2.1. From the discussion above I can't figure out what's the solution! Has anybody got a clue of what to do, because I'm stuck on the verge of submitting two papers!
    Many thanks...
  • fbennett
    @janske80,

    Hi, I am the author of the citeproc-js citation processor used by Zotero. Please check your zotero.org messages. I can provide you with a private copy of Zotero 2.1.6 with an updated processor that might address your problems. I can't guarantee that it will clear things up, but I've tracked down some bugs in the processor recently, and if you would be willing to run the processor against a copy of your data and documents, I would be interested in the result.
  • khairulanwar
    Don't only practical solution is recite the document. Firstly, I save it as a new document then click Zotero remove code and lastly redo each citation one-by-one. luckily my document is only less than 50 pages long. I finish it in about one hour. But I worry it will happen again. So what I do is create new copy every day as backup.
  • lariom
    I have the same problem. I have 2.1.6 on my home computer and an older version on my work computer. Everything is fine on my work computer. I can actually cite "deleted" sources in NEW documents but am not able to alter documents created under the older version. So for me, the sources are very much NOT deleted but cannot be recognized by the document created with a previous version of zotero. Help please!:)
  • lariom
    Sorry - the comments from "I can actually.." refer to my home computer...
  • sidies
    I had exactly this problem with a large document after updating to zotero 2.1.6 (firefox 4 windows vista).
    When I clicked on "Set Document Preferences" I got a message telling me that item 1 is not in my zotero database. When I checked the problem item (by entering this uri in firefox: zotero://report/items/0_BE3JM8R9/html/report.html ) as suggested by Dan Stillman in another thread, the item was there.
    I now have the document working again - I pasted a paragraph from it into a new document, then hit "set document prefs". I then pasted the entire text of the file into this new document, hit "set document prefs", and it works fine.
  • mikaelasmit
    I have had the same problem. From this threat I cannot see how to fix it.

    Sidies, I have tried your link but it doesn't exists when i paste it into the firfox address bar. Could you check the link is correct and give more details of how to find "Set Document preferences"?

    My items are still all in the library, it just seems to want me to replace each one by hand...considering my document is a PhD Thesis I am not so keen on this solution. ALternitavley does anyone know how to re-instal version 2.0?
  • dstillman
    mikaelasmit: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/17826/#Comment_91632

    Follow those instructions to get a proper report link to see if the items are really there. If not, then it's because you either exported and imported items via RDF or because you upgraded from Zotero 1.0 on separate computers and are editing on a different computer from where you originally started.
  • sidies
    Thanks Dan. Apologies for not posting the link. That's exactly what I did - I updated my database on one computer then synchronised it (using GoodSync) with another. I use the same database on windows and linux, and word and openoffice. This is one of the biggest advantages of zotero for me. I spent a couple of hours on this yesterday so I'd be keen to avoid this problem in future.
  • rselove
    I am about to give up. None of the other Zotero users in my organization have used Zotero to embed citation links as they create the document and so are unable to help me. I do not understand the relevance of advice posted to others with this same problem. To reiterate: I created a document with citations embedded using the current version of Zotero. I had no problem for for several months. Then I didn't work on the project for over a month, and when I returned I got the error message discussed in this thread. I eliminated all links in the document and started with a Zotero "naive" document. The same message appeared. My database has never been synchronized due to an organizational firewall. I will appreciate any suggestions - in the meantime I am reverting to a manual process and looking into other software. I would really like to be able to get Zotero to function again!
  • adamsmith
    rselove - start a new thread if you don't think the problems and solutions here apply to you.
    I also have a hard time understanding what you're describing - what you post here doesn't sound like the same problem that you described here:
    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/18265/this-item-no-longer-exists-in-your-zotero-database-do-you-want-to-select-a-substitute-item/

    E.g. I don't know what you mean by a Zotero "naive" document, nor do I know what you mean by "eliminating all links". If you're unsure about technical terms, describe what you're doing and refer to the buttons you're pressing.
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