Unable to Load PDFs when Synchronizing over OneDrive

zhenght

MacOS: Monterey 12.5.1, Zotero 6.0.26
Windows 11 Pro 23H2, Zotero 6.0.27

I have been synchronizing my Zotero library over OneDrive between Mac machines and they worked without problems (I understand this is not a recommended practice but I wanted to save hard disk space on my computer). I also stored all PDF file on OneDrive.

I recently got a Windows machine that I wanted to synchronize my Zotero library on it. However, when I signed in and synchronized by specifying the Linked Attachment Base Directory location on this machine, all the articles were present in the library but none of the PDFs could be opened.

Any input is appreciated!

tim820

So it sounds like you have your Zotero database on Onedrive and you also have your PDFs stored as linked attachments rather than under Zotero\storage. As you say, the first is a unsafe configuration (see 'Unsafe Data Directory Locations' at the link below); that can result in your database getting corrupted. The second is not. Make sure you have good backups for both (and incremental backups for the first - the database - so that you have the ability to track back to an uncorrupted version if necessary).
https://www.zotero.org/support/preferences/advanced#files_and_folders

Your current issue appears to be with the linked PDFs. BTW you don't need a Linked Attachment Base Directory setting unless the file path to your linked PDFs is different on different computers - it simply tells Zotero where to *look* for PDFs. But once you have set a LABD on one computer, you need to set it on all computers (even if it is an identical setting). And the LABD has nothing to with "synchronization".

When Zotero can't open a PDF, the error message tells you where it thinks the PDF is located. Is the PDF at that location or not ?