Creating an item from a PDF which is opened in FF

I have a trouble with 2.0b4 when I want to create an item with the selector "create new item from the current page" when the current page is a pdf. Zotero only create an standalone file, without attaching it to an item. It is working very well with the 1.0 version.
  • This is a temporary change to allow for the saving of standalone PDF attachments that can be used with the "Retrieve PDF Metadata" feature. The previous behavior will be restored in an upcoming beta version along with improvements to that functionality that allow it to be run automatically and/or on child PDFs.

    In the meantime, you'll need to first create a parent item manually (or by using "Create New Item from Current page on a prior web page) and then either drag the saved PDF attachment on top of it or drag the link/favicon (icon to the left of the URL) on top of it to create a child attachment.
  • This may duplicate some of the above, I hope a record of my observations will help. On Firefox 3.0.10, and MAX OS X 10.5.7 PDF links get opened in an Acrobat Window, and not in the browser (I think this is normal Mac Firefox behaviour), perhaps i need a plugin. Any pdf url dropped from the browser into Zotero, opens in acrobat, and doesn't leave an item in Zotero. The resultant downloaded file does not have an acrobat icon in Finder, but opens Acrobat when double-clicked. If I drop any (with or without icon) pdf into Zotero from Finder, a non pdf item gets created, metadata retrieval menu not available.
  • pjgoodall: This is a bug in 2.0b4. It's been fixed, and the fix will be available in the next beta build, which should be out sometime next week. A workaround is to load PDFs via a plugin and click Create New Item from Current Page, which works properly. The PDFs saved incorrectly in the meantime will be automatically corrected when you upgrade to the next version.
  • Thanks Dan. Keep up the good work...
  • Has this bug been fixed yet? I am having the same trouble today and prior posts seem to indicate it should have been fixed back in May or early June. I just downloaded 2.0 today and not saving PDFs as an item will take a lot more time.... Help!
  • which issue exactly are you referring to? The one mentioned by pjgoodall (which should be fixed) or the one noted at the top by Vincent (which is current intended FF behavior)
  • Sorry for the delayed reply - been on vacation. I was referring to the issue Vincent described at the top: selecting create new item from current page while viewing a pdf saves the pdf, but then I must create an additional new item to save the metadata. Big pain in the butt!!! 90% of my research is from pdfs of journal articles. It will take me twice as long with this "intended feature." In other posts I have read that it would be fixed in the new update - where is that update?
  • edited August 10, 2009
    if you are using pdfs from journal articles - why don't you use regular translators?
    I.e. the icon in the URL bar, e.g. for JSTOR, ScienceDirect, Informaworld etc.

    Also, for most pdfs you download from the internet, right-clicking and selecting "Retrieve Metadata" will not just create a parent item, but also include the relevant citation information. I think this was the main reason to change this in Zotero:
    Otherwise, to use the "retrieve" function, you would have to create the item, drag the pdf out of the parent, delete the parent, then select "retrieve metadata" - which, in turn, many people considered quite annoying.
    I haven't seen any reference to this being changed in the near future - the behavior for "retrieve metadata" I believe will be adjusted so that is produces empty parents when it can't retrieve the information.
  • I haven't seen any reference to this being changed in the near future - the behavior for "retrieve metadata" I believe will be adjusted so that is produces empty parents when it can't retrieve the information.
    There has also been talk of automating the retrieve metadata/create an empty parent step so that it happens automatically whenever a PDF is added.
  • Yeah, clicking the browser icon is a handy feature when it's available and I do when I am using Jstor and the like. Unfortunately, this particular bit of research I'm doing has me searching for 2006-2009 articles and Jstor only covers through 2005. For articles that recent I pretty much have to go to the journal websites directly and icons are rare. Further, "retrieving metadata" results in getting stuck with no data and no way to cancel the process. I have to restart Firefox to get out of it. Big Pain!!

    Still, I wanted to test adding an item from Jstor to see if I had the same problem and there are some definite issues.

    Problem 1: The icon is available in the Jstor page viewer. Click it, it stores metadata just fine, but no link to the original article, no pdf, etc.

    Problem 2: Next, I tried opening the pdf from Jstor and there's no icon in the browser then. So I tried saving the item from current page and like always it creates a standalone pdf. Okay, retrieve metadata, and it does what it should, creating a parent with pdf attached. However, it was the wrong metadata!! Instead of "Reinventing WAC (Again): The First-Year Seminar and Academic Literacy" which was the article I was actually viewing, it retrieved info for something called "Raised levels of a new immunoglobulin class (IgND) in asthma" and recorded jibberish as multiple authors - looks like it might be the tags or keywords, but definitely not names of people responsible for writing the article. That's not going to work either.

    So, I say the saving a pdf process still needs a bit of work. Any idea when that might happen? I love Zotero, but I can't afford to let it slow me down at this stage in my research. I would appreciate any help.
  • Further, "retrieving metadata" results in getting stuck with no data and no way to cancel the process. I have to restart Firefox to get out of it. Big Pain!!
    This was already fixed, though you may not have received the latest translator updates. Go to the General pane of the Zotero preferences and click Update Now.
  • Problem 1 shouldn't exist. If you have institutional access to JSTOR and have the "automatically download pdf" option checked in the preferences you should get the pdf.
    If not, post a link.

    Problem "0" shouldn't exist either - clicking on cancel should stop the retrieve metadata process without restarting firefox. Please provide steps to reproduce that error.

    As for Journal sites - which one are you referring to? - Zotero has translators for all major Journal Publishers including Springer, Elsevier, Muse, Cambridge U Press, Taylor and Francis, Blackwell, in addition to that Ingenta, EBSCO, Proquest, Sciencedirect and several others. I pretty much never encounter a published journal article that I cannot import using a Zotero translator.

    The last problem is known and improving that functionality is relatively high on the agenda I think - the most frequently discussed option is a) to include what Bionatsci says above and b) check with the user before actually importing the metadata to see if its for the right article.
  • I have the same problem as ljacobs and Vincent:
    "selecting create new item from current page while viewing a pdf saves the pdf, but then I must create an additional new item to save the metadata."

    My issue is I'm referring to a lot of government or quais-government PDFs which don't have metadata. And also technical white papers in PDF format.

    I've tried "Save link as Zotero item", same thing. (Oddly enough when I tried Retrieve metadata with an item saved in that way, Zotero gave it totally different metadata and lost the URL link! This is reproducible - go to http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/fsj/privacy/docs/wpdocs/2007/wp136_en.pdf - then try to click Create New Item from Current Page, and when you rightclick to retrieve metadata from that, it wipes it out! At least if it kept the URL I could then change the title etc).

    I realise some people need the opposite, but why not provide an option which people can enable or disable so that PDFs can be saved in such a way that you can then enter the metadata direct? As ljacobs said this is a big pain and is really slowing me down.

    I notice that with Word documents using "Save link as Zotero item" works exactly as I need it.

    Any suggestions for workarounds would be much appreciated. Thank you.
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