Zotero has a built-in PDF reader, which is what we recommend using. If you want to open PDFs in an external reader, you can set that from the General pane of the Zotero settings. But you should read through Annotations in Database to understand the downsides.
For other questions, it's best to start a new thread with a proper title.
I am taking a course where the have articles to read that open in safari but not in a way that it links into zotero. so then I can download them and then they open into acrobat. so I have to figure out how to open the downloaded article into zotero instead
First, make sure you've read through Adding Items to Zotero so you understand generally how Zotero is meant to be used. You generally want to save from article pages, not from PDFs directly. Zotero should automatically download a PDF if one is available.
If there's no article page, you can save the PDF directly to Zotero — you should generally see a PDF icon in the save button. Zotero will then try to retrieve metadata automatically.
Saving from ScienceDirect in general may currently not work well from Safari, though, due to technical limitations of the Safari extension framework and some strict anti-bot protections on Elsevier's end. See the Limitations section of the Safari extension documentation. And PDF saving on ScienceDirect is actually currently spotty in other browsers as well, again due to the anti-bot protections. We're working to change the way Zotero downloads files to make it more reliable on sites that use these kinds of measures.
If a PDF fails to save along with the metadata, you can always just save it to disk and drag it into Zotero as a child attachment of the regular item.
Upgrade Storage
https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/safari_compatibility
Zotero has a built-in PDF reader, which is what we recommend using. If you want to open PDFs in an external reader, you can set that from the General pane of the Zotero settings. But you should read through Annotations in Database to understand the downsides.
For other questions, it's best to start a new thread with a proper title.
If there's no article page, you can save the PDF directly to Zotero — you should generally see a PDF icon in the save button. Zotero will then try to retrieve metadata automatically.
Saving from ScienceDirect in general may currently not work well from Safari, though, due to technical limitations of the Safari extension framework and some strict anti-bot protections on Elsevier's end. See the Limitations section of the Safari extension documentation. And PDF saving on ScienceDirect is actually currently spotty in other browsers as well, again due to the anti-bot protections. We're working to change the way Zotero downloads files to make it more reliable on sites that use these kinds of measures.
If a PDF fails to save along with the metadata, you can always just save it to disk and drag it into Zotero as a child attachment of the regular item.