I am using version 2.5.12. It's installed on a Mac, and I've configured synchronization to "file system" and pointed it at a local directory that belongs to Google Drive. (I have not installed Joplin on any other device--I set up synchronization to serve the purpose of an automatic backup in the cloud.)
I'm new to Joplin and liking it. I've used it for about a week now. When I opened it up this afternoon, however, I saw conflict notices for the first time. I'll attach a screenshot:
How did a conflict arise? I use Joplin on only one machine.
Where are the conflicting versions? I see only one version of each of the four pages.
Most important, where are the rest of my files? I had another notebook that is no longer visible. Most of my week's work was in the other notebook. Is that work now gone?
I did look on the forum for other conflict-related questions. My situation doesn't seem to match them. I gather that with a conflict I should expect to see two versions of each conflicted page, right?
The sync target really isn't suitable as a backup solution nor should it be used as such. A proper backup solution would be far better served by installing the simple backup plugin and having that export its backup to a cloud folder - or better, to both a local and a cloud folder.
I can only assume what has happened here is that for some reason the data in your sync target has gone wrong and caused Joplin to delete info and pull some notes in as a "conflict" when it isn't one in the true sense of the word - similar behaviour has been seen before when people have had issues migrating to new sync targets.
Is there any difference in data (number of files, most recent files etc.) between your local sync folder and what is actually stored in your google drive?
Although the data stored in the sync target doesn't consist of "true" markdown files (they contain all kinds of sync related metadata) you should still be able to search for content you had within your missing notes to see if they still exist on the target or not.
If you can't find anything then, providing you had note revisions turned on, you might still be able to find your deleted data in your database - although I'm not sure if this would have been deleted if the deletes happened as a result of Joplin deleting via sync.
Either way it is worth making a backup of your profile database in case you need to use the restoration procedure if all else fails.
Thank you for the prompt reply, and for letting me know about the backup plugin.
Something definitely went wrong with Google. There were more files in the Google Cloud than there were in my supposedly synced local copy of GDrive, and yet GDrive reported no synchronization errors.
I restored my files by turning off synchronization, closing down Joplin, emptying the local Joplin folder (the primary one, not the local sync copy) and refilling the local folder by copying down everything from the Google Drive cloud. That got me back to something like sanity.
