how to link citation to pdf

thorowitz
This is a very basic question, but I can't seem to find the answer in the documentation. I have imported a pdf file into Zotero Standalone (on Windows 7). The pdf does not have metadata. I want to retrieve the citation information from the web and link it to the pdf such that it shows up in the info tab of the Zotero pane. I have tried selecting "library lookup" from the "locate" menu, but nothing happens.

I am new to Zotero, migrating from Papers2, where this was an easy operation ("match").
  • adamsmith
    If the citation info is not in Zotero already:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/retrieve_pdf_metadata

    If you already have the info in Zotero, you can just drag the PDF to the item that holds the information to attach it.
  • thorowitz
    The retrieve metadata procedure is great, and works for the majority of pdfs I have imported to Zotero. But I have two pdfs now which do not seem to have metadata associated with them. Perhaps I did not make that clear enough in my original posting. When I try to retrieve metadata, I get an error message: "PDF does not contain OCRed text".
  • adamsmith
    you'll have to do those manually. There is not text that Zotero can read in those --> no metadata. Use
    Right-click --> Create Parent Item

    and then you'll unfortunately have to put the data in manually.
    Alternatively, try to find the article somewhere online, import to Zotero and attach the PDF.
  • dstillman
    And note that if you do the latter, you can just drag the attachment item onto the newly added item.

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