adding very many linked files

matteopinnap

Dear all,

I'm entirely new to Zotero. I have been constructing my personal archive of journal articles since more than 15 years, based on a folder structure. I have about 9000 papers. I now would like to have this information managed by Zotero. I see no use for myself duplicating this archive, so I need to use linked files. However, I'm facing obstacles adding these "links" to Zotero. If I proceed through 'Add linked file...' and select the entire set of files, Zotero loads exactly the first 111 files and then stops (without returning any error message as far as I can see). I tried the 'Add files from folder...' plug-in -which does have a linked filed option– but if I select the main folder of my archive I obtain a vague 'Scanning for attachments...' message with a full-green progress bar –rather uninformative, as there's no way to ascertain whether the software is looping through tasks or got blocked. I waited for 10 minutes maximum. Should I wait more?

I understand 9000 files is a lot (although Mendeley, for all its clear drawbacks, did manage), but if 100 is already too much, then perhaps there's something wrong about it. Note that I have a rather powerful machine.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance

matteopinnap

For any future reader: the problem was caused by the presence of files with names exceeding the 260 character threshold. It was solved by identifying those files by means of one of the many dedicated applications, and shortening their name.