Remove Collections from Desktop but Keep in Cloud

mepeacock

I have 250 GB of materials in my Zotero library that are syncing to my desktop. I want to keep the whole library in the cloud, but I only need desktop access to a couple of the collections. Is there a way to tell Zotero to only sync particular collections to my desktop, and remove the others (while keeping everything in the cloud)? Thank you. If you have addressed this somewhere in the forums already, I would appreciate a link.

adamsmith

There is no selective sync in Zotero and anything you delete in Zotero locally will be deleted online, so there's no super simple way. As dstillman (correctly, I promise) explained in the other thread you posted to, if you're sure your files are synced online (i.e. you are able to download them -- not just see them -- from your web library) and you are deleting files only in your file system (i.e. in Mac Finder or Windows File Explorer, not by using Zotero), those files will remain in the cloud. If that's not what you're seeing, you can follow up in the other thread with exact steps to reproduce, but since Zotero doesn't have any code to monitor local file deletions and sync them, that would really be near impossible.

Note that you want to set up sync "as needed" in the Zotero file sync settings so that files you removed don't sync back down.