Zim

desktop items entirely deleted with notebook

Asked by Jacob Moh

Hi. I've encountered a big problem. I just installed Zim Desktop Wiki and recently created a notebook linked to my Desktop. Today, I was trying to familiarize myself with the program. In the process, I wanted to create a new notebook and start afresh. So I thought of deleting the old notebook "Desktop". I right-clicked on "Desktop" and then clicked "delete page". To my great dismay, after doing that, all the files on my desktop - including files in folders on my desktop, were deleted. I've been trying to find out where they went, but they have all disappeared. My computer's trash bin doesn't have them as well. Could you please help? Is there a way to recover all the files I've lost? Thank you in advance.

Jacob (<email address hidden>)

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Jaap Karssenberg
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Jaap Karssenberg (jaap.karssenberg) said : 		#1

It is not entirely clear to me what it is what you did. You write you deleted the notebook in zim, but zim does not have a function to delete a whole notebook, just pages and sub-hierarchies within a notebook. I assume you made your Desktop folder part of a notebook and then selected to delete it from the notebook - is that correct ?

When you delete a page from zim it is deleted along with all the files below it, since these are considered attachments of the page. There is a dialog that warns you that the page will be delted along with all it's sub pages and attachments.

If this is what happened I'm afraid your data is really gone. Zim does not use the Trash bin. Instead it offers version control to be able to reverse changes. But I don't assume you enabled that already when playing around with it.

In general you don't want to use existing folders like the Desktop folder as notebook for zim, you want a new empty folder to start out with.

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Jacob Moh (jacobmoh) said : 		#2

["I assume you made your Desktop folder part of a notebook and then selected to delete it from the notebook - is that correct ?"]

Yes, I believe that's what I did. A big mistake, because I didn't know that all files associated with the page are actually "attachments", as you say. The dialog did appear, but I wasn't aware of existing attachments.

["Zim does not use the Trash bin. Instead it offers version control to be able to reverse changes. But I don't assume you enabled that already when playing around with it."]

I checked the preferences and the "version control" box was ticked. I therefore assume it's enabled. Also, existing folders on my desktop that were attached to the page I deleted still appear on my desktop. They appear empty now. But when I try to delete them, a dialog appears telling me that they've been moved or deleted. I'm simply unable to remove the folders now. Does this mean that the folders are still being used by Zim?

hope you can continue assisting me on this. Thanks.

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Best Jaap Karssenberg (jaap.karssenberg) said : 		#3

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 8:47 AM, Jacob Moh
<email address hidden> wrote:
> Jacob Moh gave more information on the question:
> ["I assume you made your Desktop folder part of a notebook and then
> selected to delete it from the notebook - is that correct ?"]
>
> Yes, I believe that's what I did.  A big mistake, because I didn't know
> that all files associated with the page are actually "attachments", as
> you say.  The dialog did appear, but I wasn't aware of existing
> attachments.

How did you make your Desktop part of the notebook. Did you use a
symlink or did you move it into the notebook folder ?

> ["Zim does not use the Trash bin. Instead it offers version control to
> be able to reverse changes. But I don't assume you enabled that already
> when playing around with it."]
>
> I checked the preferences and the "version control" box was ticked.  I
> therefore assume it's enabled.

If you used a symlink I'm not sure if the files are archived properly.
This is not a usage that I reckoned with on forehand. But if you used
some other way it may be that files can be recovered from the version
archive.

Open a terminal and go to the zim notebook folder. (So the folder
below which you put the desktop folder.) And try:

  $ bzr satus -r 0

This shows version changes since initializing the notebook. If this
shows a lot of deleted files, you can get them back with

  $ bzr revert -r 0

However in case of a symlink it may be that only the link is shown but
not the actual files. In that case I'm afraid there is nothing you can
do to recover unless you have some other backup of your own.

> Also, existing folders on my desktop
> that were attached to the page I deleted still appear on my desktop.
> They appear empty now. But when I try to delete them, a dialog appears
> telling me that they've been moved or deleted.  I'm simply unable to
> remove the folders now.  Does this mean that the folders are still being
> used by Zim?

Not sure, this behavior may be due to your desktop environment. Zim
does not lock folders it is using or something like that.

Hope this helps,

Jaap

Revision history for this message
Jacob Moh (jacobmoh) said : 		#4

As I recall, I believe that I used a symlink to link my desktop with the notebook. Since that's the case, I guess there's nothing more we can do about the lost files.

But I'll still be using Zim Wiki in the meantime. I'll be more careful about how link the pages and files next time. As they say, we learn from our mistakes.

Thanks for your help, Jaap. Good day to you.

Jacob