Rename file from Metadata not working

Anthony J. Langlois

Using Zotero 2.1.1 on Mac; firefox 4; latest Mac OS

I have a bunch of files I want to rename from Metadata, which has never been a problem in the past. Now, however, this function simply doesn't work.

Any ideas?

adamsmith

How exactly does it fail?
edit: oops sorry, wrong funtion - but it'd still be good to know how this fails.
Also, have you made sure that the file really is not renamed?

Anthony J. Langlois

OK, so now the picture looks more complicated. I have just renamed and pdf from metadata that I have previously worked on. It works fine.

A bunch of PDF files that I recently downloaded however will not change. I highlight the file, click on the rename to metadata option, and nothing happens.

And something further odd - I have just gone to look for the file, but when I ask to "show file" it tells me it can't be found. Lets see if I can view the file.... No. Ok, let me see if I can solve this little mystery. But a question - if the files are no longer in Zotero for some reason, why are they still listed in my library as if they were all there A-ok?

adamsmith

the file is listed in Zotero as long as your database has it listed - whether it's there or not (e.g. if you don't sync files, you'll still see the pdf attachments in Zotero on the computer that doesn't actually have a stored copy).
So what happened here is that Zotero is looking in the wrong link -
if you feel like a little detective work, looking at the debug output for looking for such a file can probably help you make sense of what happened - the actual file - most likely still there but with a wrong (?) name - will be in the same folder that Zotero looks.

Anthony J. Langlois

thanks. I'll see what I can do about this debugging. I think I downloaded these files on my other computer, which should have synced them to here using my webdav server setup.

Hmmm. The knowledge base page does not appear to have a "how to debug" entry. Nor does tips and tricks. I will experiment.....

adamsmith

http://www.zotero.org/support/debug_output?s[]=tab

instead of submitting click on view.

edit: ah - if the files didn't sync (yet) this is probably exactly the behavior you'd see so that seems quite plausible.

Anthony J. Langlois

OK, figured out the debug (quite straightforward in the event).

It appears that the folder which the file should be in does not exist on this computer. I suppose it must exist on the other computer in order for this issue to emerge.

Any advice on how to actually get them to sync?

I usually download on this computer and then sync to the other one; I believe this is the first time I have done it the other way around. It would be useful to know if this problem will happen each time, or how to avoid it (the other computer is a new one at work).

Anthony J. Langlois

thanks for the debug link. I did search for it, "how to debug" - nothing useful came up....

adamsmith

http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/files_not_syncing

it's much easier to find these if you know that they exist, don't worry.