Issues installing Zotero

BerdinaB

Hi there,

I've been trying to install Zotero, so far without success. I get the message "you may not have the necessary permissions to use aal the features of the program you are about to run. You may run this program as a different used or continue to run the program as the current user, but nothing happens." Can anyone help?

dstillman

Is this an institutional computer? If so, you should ask your IT department for help.

If you don't have administrative access, you should be able to install Zotero for just your user account without running into any problems. If it's installed system-wide but you don't have admin privileges, you might run into permission prompts at various points.

JanHelgeRichard

I have the same issue. Can´t install zotero on my institutational computer at all, always receiving the following message, no matter where I try to install: "Diese App wurde vom Systemadministrator gesperrt. Wenden Sie sich an den Systemadministrator, um weitere Informationen zu erhalten." ("This application has been blocked by the system administrator. refer to your system administrator t get further information"). Is there any possibility installing zotero manually, without an installer?

adamsmith

The beta version is also distributed as a .zip file, which doesn't require an installer: https://www.zotero.org/support/beta_builds
(It's still an executable, though, so if your sysAdmin wants to block it they can, in which case you'll still need to talk to them)

dstillman

The regular version is available as a ZIP too. Click “Other platforms” below the download button.

JanHelgeRichard

Thank you, I found the two ZIP-files. However, as adamsmith mentioned, I still can´t execute Zotero, since it is a .exe-file.
Talking to the System-Admins doesn´t help. The official IT-policy is, that no open source program is allowed to run on our computers, because no one can be sued when a problem occurs. Unfortunately, the firefox-Version of zotero doesn´t run anymore. For some incomprehensible reason firefox is installed on our computers and most extensions run well...

adamsmith

Nothing to be done then -- obviously sysAdmins can block apps and/or disallow any exe files to run so that they're the only ones who can allow tools to run on local machines. It's too bad that they're choosing to use that power this way.

annybarrakudda

I had the same issues as BerdinaB but had made sure I had admin rights. The solution to the problem was to execute zotero from the extracted zipfiles.

emilianoeheyns

Although you generally wouldn't want to use admin rights to run Zotero

chrishanduk

Semi-related... I was finding that whenever Zotero was updating itself (or I was updating it) on MacOS, I was prompted for admin credentials to install a "helper".

I've just installed the latest version 8.0.4 in ~/MyApplications instead of /Applications (downloaded the DMG, dragged the application to ~/My Applications) and it worked OK without asking for admin credentials.

Hopefully future updates won't require admin input either — up to now I was having to put in a ticket to our IT services and getting them to update it. (Which always crashed, and always resulted in just installing the latest version.)

Hope this helps!

dstillman

@chrishanduk: Yes, if you install to your home folder, you won't need admin access to update the app. That's equivalent to canceling the admin password prompt in the Windows installer, which forces a home-directory installation.