Help with cleaning up files/dirs

mdot

Hi, I've been using Zotero for years, somewhat haphazardly. I use zotfile to rename/move pdf files to a directory (sync-folder/%T/%y/) & I cloud sync that. But I've still got a ton of stuff stored in /Users/me/Zotero, including what seems to be all the non-pdf files. I'd like to get everything in one well-organized, cloud-synced directory. How can I do that? It seems like if I point Zotero's Data Directory to my pdf directory, It'll get filled with /Zotero/2EYRSCH9 folders. Is that just the way it is? Thank you!

dstillman

The Zotero data directory is managed by Zotero. You absolutely can't store that in a cloud storage folder, and you shouldn't worry about what's in there. You can use an OS smart folder to get a flat list of all the PDF files within it if you prefer, and that's what we recommend for file access outside of Zotero.

If you want to use ZotFile to store linked files elsewhere, you can do that (though we can't help with that), but you should not change the data directory setting.

tim820

You can setup Zotfile to move the other non-Zotero file types like word processor, excel, jpg, powerpoint, txt, mp4, wav to its Custom Location as linked files, along with the linked PDFs. The default setting of Tools\Zotfile Preferences\Advanced Settings\'Only work with the following file types' (if ticked) excludes some of those file types, that as result will end up being placed in local Zotero storage. You can add those other file types to that list and then get Zotfile to move them.

But there is other Zotero stuff in those arbitrarily-named Zotero folders that can't be separated from the sqlite database file in the Zotero\storage folder by any setting, and that database file can't be put in a cloud-mirrored location without danger, as mentioned.