Thanks aurimas, this is really helpful, a model reply!
As you say, it is local files which we need to target, not remote ones. My mistake (big stupid mistake).
1. Drag and drop seems alas precluded by OneNote not being fully integrated into Windows (really weird, huh?)
2. For some strange reason I'm not getting the link to the local Zotero file location to open, as I do the (very similar) link to the local DropBox file location. No idea why. When I look at them, they look like mirror images of each other, but one works and the other doesn't.
This link works:
C:\Users\M Montagu-Pollock\Dropbox\1 Ongoing work\2
Philippine book\Demographic Transition\Williamson -
Demographic Transitions and Economic Miracles in Emerging Asia.pdf
This doesn't:
C:\Users\M Montagu-Pollock\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\m6okxk3x.default-1342821502168\zotero\storage\9SPMR9QX
To work, this second one requires pasting into a browser, and then an interface opens, and then you click on the pdf and it opens.
Re 2, that's a link to the directory (copied from the location bar?), not the file itself. See here for copying file path (shift+ right-click the file -> copy as path)
OK, re No 2. It can be done by hand from OneNote's Linking system, it is just that the path is significantly longer than that to the DropBox file, and since the script is in would you call it 'machine-language' (?) the process is more difficult.
If file path length is an issue, you can move your Zotero data directory to some other location with a shorter path. See preferences -> advanced -> files and folders -> data directory location
And I'll just say that there simply seems to have been some miscommunication above that got out of hand. Everyone regularly providing support on this forum (I.e. Dan, adamsmith, fbennett, and others) always does their very best to resolve issues and make users feel welcome.
Yes sure, my fault. I think the issue is that some 'dumbing down' is needed to the level of the person seeking help. When one gets answers which at first, second, and third reading don't seem understandable it can be stressful. Also I suspect there is sometimes a writing skills issue.
Maybe people seeking help should be required to select an 'IT competence level' box so that the support people could adjust accordingly. Maybe also support could get some informal suggestions in (to put it informally) "expanding your answers into longer but easier sentences, with relevant links, so that dummies can understand what you are saying".
A. One can hyperlink locally to files attached to a Zotero record without too much difficulty
B. They also open smoothly in a local application when the OneNote link is clicked.
Next step, to figure out how I can access my file collection from another PC (and from the OneNote, which is a cloud system, on that PC). After all, my laptop could get stolen or trashed, then I'd be in a mess.
Next step, to figure out how I can access my file collection from another PC (and from the OneNote, which is a cloud system, on that PC). After all, my laptop could get stolen or trashed, then I'd be in a mess.
So this is probably going to mess some things up for you. You're including absolute file paths in your OneNote document and then syncing that document to another computer. In order for file links to continue functioning, you need to make sure that your your files are located at the same place. You will need to move your Zotero data directory to some user-defined location that you are completely in control of (Zotero/Firefox create file paths with some random strings in it). If you can place the data directory on the same letter drive (e.g. on C: on both computers), then you're ok. If you can't (e.g. one computer has a C: drive and the other only has a D: drive), then you're a bit out of luck.
I don't know - as I consider how to manage this last task above, I feel myself sinking, once again, into the fog of confusion.
Reviewing the dialogue with Adam, some of the things he says make a vague sense to me, with my limited knowledge. But others, and such of the documentation as I can discover that is relevant to my present quest, such as the "Add Files" documentation, is, to me, seen "through a glass, darkly..."
It does seem to me that there's a case for the Zotero team to create a quick guide to how to manage what must be an enormously common use-case:
1. User has more than one computer, and there is no LAN connecting them.
2. User wants to use Zotero as the main place to keep file references, and the main location to access and manage any links to his store of pdf files
3. User wants to be able to use cloud-based programs to hyperlink to his Zotero collection and pdf attachments, from any of his computers, and through them access his files.
4. User wants his pdf file collection (and the Zotero window to them) to exist not only locally (even with a backup in some other location) but to have 'redundancy of use' so that if one work-location fails or is trashed or is stolen, there's no workflow interruption.
The quick guide would simply explain "how to". Maybe there is such a guide. But if not, this is surely surprising. Maybe what I am suggesting can't be done but if so, again this is surely surprising. Nowadays we all largely live in the cloud and every program is expected to hyperlink to every other in the cloud, and at the same time give us much the same immediacy of user-experience as if things were all being done locally.
Hi aurimas, sorry - my comment was being worked on while you were drafting yours - again, a very helpful comment. Easy: c:\zotero, voila. I've already done the moving. I don't believe I've ever worked from a computer that doesn't have a C drive!
well, sometimes you might not have write access to the C drive. But other than that, you should be all set up. We actually don't get that many requests like yours, so your use case is not as common as you might think (or people don't bother to ask, idk).
Hi Aurimas - I'd just set up SugarSync (a standard file synchronizing service which keeps a chosen folder synchonized in another computer) to synchonize my laptop's c:\zotero with my desktop's c:\zotero.
However maybe Zotero Storage can do this for me? And the linking functionality that we talked about will work?
(I appreciate that DropBox is 'streng verboten' but it seems that SugarSync doesn't work in quite the same way. In DropBox you place whatever folder you want synced in the DropBox folder, whereas SugarSync and many other synchonizers sync whatever local folder you choose.)
You should not be syncing your Zotero data directory (directory containing zotero.sqlite file) using third party services. That could (and most likely will) lead to database corruption. Though, you can sync the "storage" directory that's found within, if you want. Zotero Storage can certainly do the same for you. The only thing it can't do is sync linked filles outside of the storage directory (i.e. files you attach as links)
My question was also prompted by the concern that I'd be setting up a redundancy of syncs, opening the door to sync chaos, with Zotero on both PCs syncing to Zotero Storage, and the c:\zotero folder being synced between computers via SugarSync.
Don't know enough to know what the preferable setup is, and what the dangers are.
You most definitely do not want two services syncing anything together. You can use SugarSync as a backup service, but don't use it to sync along with Zotero's sync.
So I am stuck figuring out how to set up file sync, i.e. to sync the attachment directory. I discovered the 'Syncing' documentation, but apart from explaining that there are two separate areas which need syncing, 'data', and 'file' syncing for attachment files, no explanation is provided about how to sync attachment files (it just says: "to sync these files, you can set up file syncing to accompany data syncing..."). Same applies to the 'sync' document, which simply refers one back 'for more information' to 'Syncing'. Same seems to apply to the 'Zotero file storage' document, and though that has a promising-looking link to a 'Zotero Groups' document, surely that document is intended more for collaboration than computer-to-computer syncing, or else surely it would say: "this is is also how to sync attached files between two of your computers"?
Is there some other documentation which provides the magic key?
I guess I may be making a mountain out of a molehill. Maybe Zotero's documentation doesn't explain how to sync attachments because it assumes that it is obvious, you just go to Preferences | Sync | Settings and check 'Sync attachments in My Libary using Zotero'.
Having done that in both computers, and with both data and file libraries located in c:\zotero, I should be ready to go, right?
But there is still a worry: when I look at Preferences | Advanced ! Files and Folders, it says: 'Data Directory Location:' and when I moved this to c:\zotero, maybe I did not move the location where the attachments are supposed to be. True, I copied the entire My Apps Zotero directory there, following what I maybe mistakenly thought were the instructions. But is that where the file directory is supposed to be?
Where file directories have been copied to (by me), and where they are supposed to be to get Zotero file syncing to work correctly, are maybe two different issues. If Zotero intended the file directories to be in the same place as the Data directores, it would surely not have labelled Preferences | Advanced ! Files and Folders 'Data Directory Location' but 'Data and File Directory Location'.
So (to return to the original question), how can I best set things up, in order to sync data storage between two computers?
HI Aurimas, welcome back! As I sign out, I'll assume that my system is set up as it should be, it is just that the forums reveal quite a number of problems with disappearing file attachments, so I wanted to be sure.
Not sure how to say this, but have you had a User Experience guy look at your documentation from the perspective of a new user? The point of UX guys is to say: 'Look, you experienced application designers/site designers/helpdesk people know all about how this works, but do you really understand that it may be confusing for beginners and exactly why and where they're confused?'
Your colleagues, I notice, are very comfortable when talking at quite a high level to users about possible features. Of course this is the interesting part of the job. Its at the lower level that there is a problem. It has taken me the best part of three days to figure out whether Zotero might sync between one computer and another and whether links to the files and folders it archives would work, and to check how. Of course I'll admit that I'm probably a very stupid guy, but I use lots and lots of programs, and the learning curve is rarely as hard as this. Figuring out whether a program will do what I want will usually take me about 15 minutes flat.
Returning to the your immediate comment. Yes, I have already seen 'sync page' and 'Zotero File Storage page' and 'Sync Preferences'. I can't agree that in them 'this is clearly explained' otherwise I wouldn't have spent the best part of eight hours worrying whether I'd got it all set up correctly, and puzzling very carefully and painstakingly over the exact wording of the help documentation! I pointed out one way in which the site seems misleading (labelling Preferences | Advanced ! Files and Folders 'Data Directory Location' when it would more helpfully be called 'Data and File Attachment Directory Location').
I feel you're all doing a great job, but a lot of questions you answer could more easily be explained at documentation stage, by longer and more detailed documentation. As to whether documentation has, or has not been satisfactorily done, that is not really a matter of opinion. It can be tested, by running some UX tests.
I'm just saying this because I really am trying to help, particularly trying to help Zotero deal with people who are, like me, new to the system.
As I say above, please start a new thread for diverging topics. If you have specific suggestions on what is not clear, we're happy to fix things, otherwise Zotero doesn't have resources to hire a "UX guy" to maintain documentation. The documentation is a wiki, is frequently user-contributed, and, besides being a bit outdated, we don't receive many complaints about confusing language or concepts.
I honestly do not know which part of this is not clear though.
File Syncing
Check “Sync attachment files in My Library using Zotero/WebDAV” to enable file syncing for your personal Zotero library. Select “Zotero” in the dropdown menu to use Zotero File Storage, or “WebDAV” to use WebDAV storage.
Check “Sync attachment files in group libraries using Zotero storage” to enable file syncing for your group libraries.
That is a nice illustration of a text which may be clear to an insider, but obscure to the new user / person who is considering using Zotero. Not least, we've already been told that WebDav is not the preferred sync option, so these instructions are apparently irrelevant.
I'm sure you realize that the outsider won't understand (a) that Zotero makes a distinction between 'data' and 'files'; (b) that the two may be stored in different places, and (c) if he does understand this, he is likely to be nervous about it, since it opens up the possibility that his files won't be properly backed up.
I could go on to explain at greater depth why Zotero's instructions seem to me not very clear, but it would be a waste of time, as there are no listening ears on the other side.
To implement some user experience testing, no need to actually hire a UX guy. Just read something like 'Don't make me think!' by Steve Krug. His 'Rocket Surgery Made Easy' is a good guide to fixing the sort of problems you are suffering from. But it does require an open-minded and flexible approach....
I'm sure you realize that the outsider won't understand (a) that Zotero makes a distinction between 'data' and 'files'
Right, which is why that — and the difference between Zotero File Storage and WebDAV — is explained very clearly on the Sync page. The page Aurimas quoted is just the documentation for the Sync preference pane. The contents of the Zotero data directory — an advanced topic that is entirely irrelevant to most users — is explained on the Zotero data directory page.
Setting up Zotero syncing literally requires entering your username and password and nothing else. Everything else is set to just work by default. The people you're lecturing here have helped many thousands of people over the years and have a pretty good sense of people's experiences using Zotero. Sorry you had trouble here, but your experience is not representative.
OK that's fine, if that's the case then there's no more to be said.
I thought it worth commenting because (a) I've started, funded, hired for, managed, designed, and brought to completion a large and successful web site, so I've had experience with usability issues, and (b) I'm a writer and editor of 25 years' experience.
So I know when a site or instructions aren't user-friendly! I also know that the last people who will accept having their copy made clearer, are the people who wrote it.
Upgrade Storage
As you say, it is local files which we need to target, not remote ones. My mistake (big stupid mistake).
1. Drag and drop seems alas precluded by OneNote not being fully integrated into Windows (really weird, huh?)
2. For some strange reason I'm not getting the link to the local Zotero file location to open, as I do the (very similar) link to the local DropBox file location. No idea why. When I look at them, they look like mirror images of each other, but one works and the other doesn't.
This link works:
C:\Users\M Montagu-Pollock\Dropbox\1 Ongoing work\2
Philippine book\Demographic Transition\Williamson -
Demographic Transitions and Economic Miracles in Emerging Asia.pdf
This doesn't:
C:\Users\M Montagu-Pollock\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\m6okxk3x.default-1342821502168\zotero\storage\9SPMR9QX
To work, this second one requires pasting into a browser, and then an interface opens, and then you click on the pdf and it opens.
3. I need time to get to grips with Adam's URI.
Thank you again for your help.
Maybe people seeking help should be required to select an 'IT competence level' box so that the support people could adjust accordingly. Maybe also support could get some informal suggestions in (to put it informally) "expanding your answers into longer but easier sentences, with relevant links, so that dummies can understand what you are saying".
A. One can hyperlink locally to files attached to a Zotero record without too much difficulty
B. They also open smoothly in a local application when the OneNote link is clicked.
Next step, to figure out how I can access my file collection from another PC (and from the OneNote, which is a cloud system, on that PC). After all, my laptop could get stolen or trashed, then I'd be in a mess.
Reviewing the dialogue with Adam, some of the things he says make a vague sense to me, with my limited knowledge. But others, and such of the documentation as I can discover that is relevant to my present quest, such as the "Add Files" documentation, is, to me, seen "through a glass, darkly..."
It does seem to me that there's a case for the Zotero team to create a quick guide to how to manage what must be an enormously common use-case:
1. User has more than one computer, and there is no LAN connecting them.
2. User wants to use Zotero as the main place to keep file references, and the main location to access and manage any links to his store of pdf files
3. User wants to be able to use cloud-based programs to hyperlink to his Zotero collection and pdf attachments, from any of his computers, and through them access his files.
4. User wants his pdf file collection (and the Zotero window to them) to exist not only locally (even with a backup in some other location) but to have 'redundancy of use' so that if one work-location fails or is trashed or is stolen, there's no workflow interruption.
The quick guide would simply explain "how to". Maybe there is such a guide. But if not, this is surely surprising. Maybe what I am suggesting can't be done but if so, again this is surely surprising. Nowadays we all largely live in the cloud and every program is expected to hyperlink to every other in the cloud, and at the same time give us much the same immediacy of user-experience as if things were all being done locally.
However maybe Zotero Storage can do this for me? And the linking functionality that we talked about will work?
(I appreciate that DropBox is 'streng verboten' but it seems that SugarSync doesn't work in quite the same way. In DropBox you place whatever folder you want synced in the DropBox folder, whereas SugarSync and many other synchonizers sync whatever local folder you choose.)
Don't know enough to know what the preferable setup is, and what the dangers are.
Is there some other documentation which provides the magic key?
Having done that in both computers, and with both data and file libraries located in c:\zotero, I should be ready to go, right?
But there is still a worry: when I look at Preferences | Advanced ! Files and Folders, it says: 'Data Directory Location:' and when I moved this to c:\zotero, maybe I did not move the location where the attachments are supposed to be. True, I copied the entire My Apps Zotero directory there, following what I maybe mistakenly thought were the instructions. But is that where the file directory is supposed to be?
Where file directories have been copied to (by me), and where they are supposed to be to get Zotero file syncing to work correctly, are maybe two different issues. If Zotero intended the file directories to be in the same place as the Data directores, it would surely not have labelled Preferences | Advanced ! Files and Folders 'Data Directory Location' but 'Data and File Directory Location'.
So (to return to the original question), how can I best set things up, in order to sync data storage between two computers?
If you experience any further issues, or have questions not directly related to the original topic, please start a new thread.
Not sure how to say this, but have you had a User Experience guy look at your documentation from the perspective of a new user? The point of UX guys is to say: 'Look, you experienced application designers/site designers/helpdesk people know all about how this works, but do you really understand that it may be confusing for beginners and exactly why and where they're confused?'
Your colleagues, I notice, are very comfortable when talking at quite a high level to users about possible features. Of course this is the interesting part of the job. Its at the lower level that there is a problem. It has taken me the best part of three days to figure out whether Zotero might sync between one computer and another and whether links to the files and folders it archives would work, and to check how. Of course I'll admit that I'm probably a very stupid guy, but I use lots and lots of programs, and the learning curve is rarely as hard as this. Figuring out whether a program will do what I want will usually take me about 15 minutes flat.
Returning to the your immediate comment. Yes, I have already seen 'sync page' and 'Zotero File Storage page' and 'Sync Preferences'. I can't agree that in them 'this is clearly explained' otherwise I wouldn't have spent the best part of eight hours worrying whether I'd got it all set up correctly, and puzzling very carefully and painstakingly over the exact wording of the help documentation! I pointed out one way in which the site seems misleading (labelling Preferences | Advanced ! Files and Folders 'Data Directory Location' when it would more helpfully be called 'Data and File Attachment Directory Location').
I feel you're all doing a great job, but a lot of questions you answer could more easily be explained at documentation stage, by longer and more detailed documentation. As to whether documentation has, or has not been satisfactorily done, that is not really a matter of opinion. It can be tested, by running some UX tests.
I'm just saying this because I really am trying to help, particularly trying to help Zotero deal with people who are, like me, new to the system.
I honestly do not know which part of this is not clear though.
I'm sure you realize that the outsider won't understand (a) that Zotero makes a distinction between 'data' and 'files'; (b) that the two may be stored in different places, and (c) if he does understand this, he is likely to be nervous about it, since it opens up the possibility that his files won't be properly backed up.
I could go on to explain at greater depth why Zotero's instructions seem to me not very clear, but it would be a waste of time, as there are no listening ears on the other side.
To implement some user experience testing, no need to actually hire a UX guy. Just read something like 'Don't make me think!' by Steve Krug. His 'Rocket Surgery Made Easy' is a good guide to fixing the sort of problems you are suffering from. But it does require an open-minded and flexible approach....
Setting up Zotero syncing literally requires entering your username and password and nothing else. Everything else is set to just work by default. The people you're lecturing here have helped many thousands of people over the years and have a pretty good sense of people's experiences using Zotero. Sorry you had trouble here, but your experience is not representative.
I thought it worth commenting because (a) I've started, funded, hired for, managed, designed, and brought to completion a large and successful web site, so I've had experience with usability issues, and (b) I'm a writer and editor of 25 years' experience.
So I know when a site or instructions aren't user-friendly! I also know that the last people who will accept having their copy made clearer, are the people who wrote it.
However if it works for most people, that's fine.