Retrieving Metadata from PDF - not working

stevejoslyn
I have had a problem retrieving metadata for PDFs for a while. I think it may be related to other issues I am having, but not sure.

All attempts to retireve metadata fail

I have a Report ID: 1148522974

Help appreciated, thanks.
  • dstillman
    edited November 6, 2012
    TypeError: Zotero.ZotFile is undefined
    Try disabling ZotFile.
  • stevejoslyn
    Hi Dan,

    I tried it again after disabling Zotfile Plug in and restarting Firefox.
    It still says "could not read text from PDF"

    The report ID generated is 257214030

    I also tried it in the standalone Zotero after closing Firefox but no luck. There was also no "report error.." log generated this way.
  • dstillman
    edited November 7, 2012
    That could just be an issue with that particular PDF, but you'd have to post it somewhere and/or provide a link for us to tell you more. Plenty of PDFs don't have embedded text or have text extraction disabled.
  • stevejoslyn
    It works with most of my PDFs. My colleagues using Zotero (lastest) have no problems with these PDFs. Or this one specifically.

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/1plvgkcsrgyhurd/Couturier%20et%20al.%20-%202012%20-%20ULTRASONOGRAPHIC%20CHARACTERIZATION%20OF%20THE%20FELINE%20CA.pdf
  • stevejoslyn
    Sorry.... It doesn't work with the majority of my PDFs. Lately I haven't found one that works.
  • dstillman
    edited November 7, 2012
    Works fine for me. Provide a Debug ID attempt for a Retrieve Metadata attempt that fails.
  • stevejoslyn
    This is the debug ID for when attempting Retrieve Metadata through the Firefox plug-in version:
    The Debug ID is D1847924256.
  • stevejoslyn
    This is the debug ID for when attempting Retrieve Metadata through the Stand alone version:

    The Debug ID is D644361550.

    Thanks again for your help.
  • dstillman
    'message' => "Component returned failure code: 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsIProcess.runw]"
    You're getting an (unspecified) error running the PDF tools. There's a decent chance this is because of security software/restrictions on your system, but you could also try deleting the pdf* files in the root of your Zotero data directory and reinstalling them from Search pane of the Zotero prefs.
  • stevejoslyn
    I don't have any security software/restrictions that I am aware of.

    re-installing them from search pane? - is that rebuild index? Will that redownload them from the Zotero Server?

    What if I back up everything. Delete all traces of zotero, library and plug-ins and do a fresh install, and re-sync from server?

    Steve
  • dstillman
    edited November 7, 2012
    I'm talking about the PDF tools, under "PDF Indexing" in the Search pane. No need to reinstall anything else, and certainly no need to touch your library data.
  • dstillman
    edited November 7, 2012
    And "pdf*" doesn't mean your own PDF files. It means the pdftotext and pdfinfo files in the root of your Zotero data directory. Delete them, restart Firefox, and reinstall them from the prefs (or just try to Retrieve Metadata again, which I believe will prompt you to reinstall the tools).
  • dstillman
    edited November 7, 2012
    You should also upgrade to the latest version of Firefox—you're still at 15.0, and the latest version is 16.0.2. You should also try disabling all your other Firefox extensions, though that's less likely to help with this.
  • stevejoslyn
    Hey! that worked. Deleted pdftotext/info files, restarted, prompted me to re-install. Now it works fine in both plug-in and standalone.

    I will upgrade to new firefox asap.

    Thanks Dan!
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