Create duplicate entry including attachments

darkdragon84

Hi! We have a shared group library to stay up to date in our field. I also have my private collection, which is much larger. I also heavily annotate my pdfs and sync the annotated pdfs as attachments with zotero. Now the whole group is of course not interested in seeing my annotations. Is there an easy way to copy an entry over from the group library to my own library, s.t. attachments are also duplicated? If I just drag and drop into my library, then my annotations are synced. If I duplicate the entry, the attachments are not duplicated. How can I duplicate an entry including attachments? Cheers

dstillman

I'm not sure I understand. If you duplicated the attachment, it would have annotations, no? (I'm interpreting this as your creating annotations using an external PDF reader, not Zotero's built-in PDF reader.) Or are you saying you would duplicate the file before you made annotations?

It's not possible to duplicate a PDF within Zotero itself, since there's not really any workflow we recommend that involves that, but you can always right-click → Show File and drag the PDF back into Zotero on another item. But, again, if you're using an external PDF reader, the annotations would just be in that copy too.

The cleanest way to do this is to use Zotero's built-in PDF reader and deselect "Annotations" for copying between libraries in the Groups section of the Zotero preferences. (An upcoming version will make it easier to change these settings when dragging.)

darkdragon84

The work flow we envision is that we have a clean group library (no annotations) and ppl can copy over papers they need into their private libraries where they can add annotations. What we don't want is that annotations ppl make in their private libraries show up in the group library. I tried it yesterday though and it seems that drag & drop from the group into the private libraray does duplicate the attachments too, so it does exactly what we want. Somehow I thought this was not the case (as drag & drop between collections in the same library just adds references and doesn't duplicate the item). I read about the show file -> drag back onto different item workaround, which works too :-) Thanks for your help!

silviastraka

@darkdragon84 I have the same issue re annotations. When I am ready to read and annotate from a group library, I do the following:
- right click - show file (show file in the containing folder)
- duplicate/copy file — it does this in the same folder, you now have two pdfs
- rename file — I remove the “copy” in the file name and add “ss annotated’

For some reason, the annotated copy does not show up on Zotero itself. But you can easily find it through the “show file” command, which will reveal both files.

I don’t often need to access the annotated versions directly, because I upload my annotations to Readwise, which then auto-exports them into my PKM on Roam Research, which is where my writing happens.

But even so, my system is easily able to access my annotated versions in a group library whenever I want. I hope this is helpful.

Silvia

dstillman

@silviastraka: No, don't do that — the Zotero data directory is managed by Zotero, and you shouldn't create new files within it. (Among other things, the duplicated file won't sync properly and would be easier to lose by accident.) If you want to make your own annotations to something in a group library, you should drag it to your own library and annotate that version.

silviastraka

Thanks for the warning, @dstillman.

I don’t need or want the duplicated file to sync, but I hear your concern about messing with Zotero’s file system.

You have identified my larger problem that i am trying to solve with my fix — doing it your way ends up duplicating work in Zotero, with no real means of keeping my personal library synched with my group library. It adds a huge layer of extra work to maintain the same record, up to date, in both places (personal and group). Annotating PDFs is a foundational part of my writing workflow, it’s something I do every day.

I haven’t yet seemed to have a problem with my workaround, but I am now worried that one day I might crash my whole setup!

Thanks again for flagging the concern.