Resolving "hard links" in Multiple Collections

Iwanai

Hello,

if a Zotero item is copied into a different collection, the application seems to create a "hard link". If any of the "hard linked" items in different collections is changed, all other items are automatically updated.

Is there any possibility to resolve such existing "hard links" in a collection so that the items in the original collection are not updated?

Thanks in advance,

Iwanai

adamsmith

a hard link is not the right way to think about this.
Think of collections like tags - the same item can be in multiple collections. You're not actually copying to an item, you're adding it to another collection. If you delete the item from the library it will disappear from all collections etc.

If you actually want to create copies/duplicates, use right-click --"Duplicate Selected Item"

Iwanai

In the collection, in which I would like to replace the tags through copies, there are over 50 documents. Unfortunately I am already using the "tags" in a word document. If an item is duplicated, Zotero still uses the "tag" and not the new item.

Is there any way to avoid relinking my 50 citations by duplicating the entries and replacing the citations item by item?

adamsmith

Not that I know of, no.
Could you clarify the use case, though? Why would you want 50 quasi-duplicates in your library? There has got to be a better way to do this.

Iwanai

I am using Zotero and BibTex export to generate DIN 1505 compliant citations. Due to the problems with alphadin.bst and the fact that some fields were missing in Zotero I updated both the Zitero2Bibtex exporter and the alphadin.bst citation style (e. g. in order to use translator field for conference companies organizing conferences).

In the word document, I am currently working on, I am using the same literature but a different citation style. There is also no need for the Zotero2Bibtex export. If I update on of the tags for my word document I can corrupt my DIN 1505 citations and therefore would like to work with copies.

Unfortunately I thought there was an easy way to resolve the links e. g. by exporting and reimporting the collection and did not think about the additional manual effort.

adamsmith

can't think of any good workarounds, sorry. That's why we tend to council against using hacks that require specific types of data entry to make one citation style/export format work.

Iwanai

Nevertheless thank you for your help.

Kind regards,

Iwanai