Zotero Won't Download PDF's

bmwresearch · 2026-02-22T23:50:19+00:00

Hello! I am hoping someone will be able to help me. I already uninstalled and reinstalled, I followed the FAQ for if Zotero is having trouble saving pdfs and nothing has worked. It just tells me whats in the picture. So apparently I can download some things from blogs, but scholarly articles it gets confused on? VPN isn't interferring, and im connected through my institution. I regularly use Zotero so i am confused as to why this is happening. Any other info I will share to help!
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u19733910/x6ang8bs5briid3znera.png

dstillman · 2026-02-22T23:50:57+00:00

We always need an example URL for problems with saving. If you're having trouble saving across many sites, see Troubleshooting Problems Saving to Zotero.

bmwresearch · 2026-02-23T01:02:39+00:00

Hey dstillman,

So it wasn't working when the PDF was open in Chrome, but after going and finding the original on a different host it seemed to let me from that webpage. It lets me do it on other PDFs though, so honestly, but sometimes it doesn't.

I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but this link was erroring Zotero for me: https://ecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1040&context=psychology_facpubs

Thank you though, I did go through the Troubleshooting Problems page before posting here, and now I'm chalking it up to maybe some files aren't allowing zotero to process them properly.