Zandy Troubleshooting

Zandy crashed…

If Zandy crashes, please submit a crash report when prompted, and describe what you were doing when it crashed. Without crash reports, it’s very hard to determine what went wrong, so please always submit them. I investigate all crash reports, but they are anonymous, so please include contact information in the report if you’d like me to get in touch with you about a fix.

Zandy isn’t showing the item or attachment I’m looking for…

If an item or attachment is available online in the library view at Zotero.org and not in Zandy, identify one such item that is in the online library and not in Zandy and open it online; it should have an address like: https://www.zotero.org/ajlyon/items/223RMC7C

Note the eight-character item key; 223RMC7C in the example here.

Now, look up the user ID and key that Zandy is using; you can find it in https://www.zotero.org/settings/keys; the user ID is a number at the top of that page.

Now enter an address like this into your browser:
https://api.zotero.org/users/USERID/items/ITEMKEY?key=APIKEY&content=json

Substitute the user ID, item key and API key from the settings page of Zotero.org to get something like this:
https://api.zotero.org/users/743083/items/223RMC7C?key=qY8pB8Hr0eUznaC6jJXPTaZ3N&content=json

This is the data that Zandy is getting for your item.

 WebDAV

If you are using WebDAV, you can check if the item is properly available from the WebDAV server by finding the eight-character attachment key as described above, then navigating to an address like http://example.com/zotero/ABCD1234.zip, replacing http://example.com/zotero/ with the WebDAV information you entered in the Zandy preferences (and the Zotero client), and the attachment key from above. After being prompted to enter your WebDAV username and password, a ZIP file should start downloading, containing one or more oddly-named files. If a ZIP file downloads, Zandy should be able to get the attachment, with the caveat that only PDF attachments are currently downloaded from WebDAV. If it fails to download, there is likely something wrong with your WebDAV setup; post to the main Zotero forums for more guidance.

Zandy isn’t showing notes…

If Zandy isn’t showing notes on any of your items, you most likely didn’t enable notes access for Zandy when your first set it up. You can view and edit the API key that Zandy is using at https://www.zotero.org/settings/keys — enable note access if it isn’t already. You’ll need to re-sync the relevant collections from Zandy after doing so.

If the key has notes access already, follow the instructions above for missing items and attachments to make sure that the notes are properly synced to the Zotero servers.

Error logging in to Zotero…

If Zandy gives an error “Communication with the service provider failed”, check your device’s time and time zone; there is only a small window of timestamps allowed by the Zotero server. This error has started appearing in recent versions of Zandy with a range of devices– see the forum thread for updates.

Debug logs

Zandy provides a lot of debug output when it runs on your device– in many cases, the debug output may provide clues to what is going wrong. There are two Android apps that make it possible for you to view debug logs and, if appropriate, submit them for review. The more established log viewer is LogThis, which runs on all devices, and there is a newer log viewer, Lumberjack. You can use either to record the debug output from Zandy and send it to me. No need to do this unless I ask you to or you are particularly curious, but it usually can show the root of a given problem

Something else?

Post to the Zandy Forum and we’ll get it sorted out!