Deleting items from online library preserving local files

iamgianluca

Hi,

How can I remove all files stored on the cloud library, and then push my local files without the full text (PDF) attachment?

I was thinking of using this solution, but wanted to check with you before doing anything wrong:
1. Unlink account on my local Zotero client, while maintaining the local data
2. Selecting on the web library the "Purge storage in my library" option
3. Change settings on my local Zotero client to not "Sync full-text content"
4. Re-link the local Zotero client and synch

Am I missing something?

adamsmith

Yeah, the above won't work. Can you step back and say a bit more what exactly you're trying to do and why?

iamgianluca

I have almost reached the full capacity of my 2GB storage with only 777 Items (research papers, mostly from Arxiv). I want to keep only the items on the cloud, without full-text PDFs, as those take up much space. If possible, I want to have the PDF only on my local clients (Linux and iPhone).

adamsmith

You can just disable file sync in the sync tab of the preferences

iamgianluca

In my local Zotero client? If yes, I've already disabled "sync full-text content" there.

However, that does not remove the PDFs already on the cloud. I could remove them manually on the web library, but that would take me a long time.

adamsmith

No, that's the wrong setting. You want to uncheck the first box under "Sync My Files" -- you almost certainly want "sync full-text content" (which is free) enabled.

And then -- any particular reason you want to remove the PDFs in the cloud? You can do that after disabling file sync using the purge storage option here, but there's really no need to (if you do want to let your storage subscription lapse, just make sure it's set to not auto-renew and eventually Zotero will clear out files >300MB on the server)

iamgianluca

Hey Adam,

Sorry for the late reply. I completely missed the notification.

I don't want to let the Zotero subscription lapse. I want to keep my current plan (2GB) and not have to upgrade to the higher tier (6GB).

I was thinking that a way to achieve that could be not to store the .pdf and snapshots on the cloud storage, and only have them available on the local storage (my laptop). Basically, I would like to have every item (research paper) on both cloud and local storage, but the attachments (e.g., the PDFs) only on the local storage.

I certainly want to keep the cloud subscription as I have Zotero on multiple devices (mobile and two laptops) and want to keep them in sync.

dstillman

Data syncing is free and unlimited. If all you want to do is sync your library data, you don't need a subscription. But the point of file syncing is to make your files available on all devices, so if you want to do that, you'll need to use Zotero Storage or WebDAV, and you'll need room for all of your files.