second user account on the same computer

bar.woolf

I use chrome not firefox. I am working on an MA and LOVE zotero. My son who uses a laptop uses my computer for printing and has asked me to open him a Zotero account on the same computer for his BA degree. While he has a web zotero account I can not open a clean new standalone for him to then use to download items into HIS zotero account not mine. Help please!
I have looked through the forums and not found how to do this.

aurimas

A different OS account would be the easiest solution, but if that's not to your liking, you can use separate Firefox or Zotero Standalone profiles: http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=Managing+profiles

The instructions are for Firefox, but it applies the same to Zotero Standalone.

ai09vw

I think I may be having a similar issue. I use the standalone Zotero on my Mac (do not have Firefox). I have been doing research work for a professor, using her account information in the program. Now I want to work on my account. I have changed the account info in the preferences to my login information; this has worked for me in the past, but no longer works. When I start Zotero, it takes me still to her library. How do I get it to go to my library? I do not understand this thing about creating profiles. How do I create a profile in Zotero?

Thanks,

aurimas

You _do not_ want to be changing just the sync username and password in the preferences. What will happen (and likely already did) is that the contents of the professor's library synced and merged with your library. If you then switched back to professor's library, your contents were probably synced and merged into his/her library.

A Firefox/Zotero Standalone profile is a set of settings (which influences your Zotero library) that are loaded when you start the application. By creating separate profiles for separate Zotero libraries, you are preventing them from mixing together. To create profiles on Mac, see http://sonnygill.net/mac/mac-multiple-firefox-profiles/ It talks about Firefox, but if you replace the path to Firefox with the path to Zotero Standalone it will work the same. Unfortunately, this is as much help as I'm able to provide for a Mac. Perhaps someone who uses then can give you more details.

ai09vw

Thanks,

What is the command line for terminal to create the second Zotero profile? I can't figure it out-- have tried several variations based on the Firefox example, but can't get it. Can someone give me the command line?

Yes, the prof's library has merged with mine (which was fortunately empty). How do I un-merge it?

It would be REALLY NICE if Zotero could make switching between libraries simpler. This has me very frustrated.

ai09vw

Also, since I am finished with her project, is there a way I can remove her library completely from my Zotero and only use mine?

aurimas

Sorry, I don't know the path (command) for standalone on a Mac. Dan would probably be able to tell you though (he'll be around some time soon).

There is no way to "unmerge" the library, but since, as you said, your library was empty, you should be able to easily delete just the items associated with your prof's account. It will probably help for you to sort the items by Date Added and then delete everything before a certain date.

Before you do this, make sure that you have _your_ account information entered in Zotero Preferences under Sync. You don't want to be deleting items from your professor's account.

Yes, easier switching between profiles has been requested before and I think is generally desired by the developers, but I'm not sure if it is actually technically possible. It may be implemented at some point in the future.

ai09vw

Thank you for your help. What I have done for now is to uninstall Zotero (and delete all its files) and re-install it and set it up for my account. I dumped all the files into one folder and then double-checked my prof's library by logging on to it through the website before deleting things. I would still like to know how to make a second profile in case I need to do further work on the other library.

adamsmith

I don't use mac either, but you should be able to get to the path easily in terminal by using tab for auto-complete:
i.e. /Applications/zo (--> tab)/zo -- (-->tab)
any of the regular mac users would know this off-hand, though.

ai09vw

Here is what I've done, in case it will help anyone else.

1. I uninstalled the Zotero stand-alone app and removed all associated files (see http://guides.macrumors.com/Uninstalling_Applications_in_Mac_OS_X). I moved the files to trash but didn't delete them until I knew everything was ok, just in case.

2. I re-installed Zotero stand-alone and set it up to sync with my own account.

3. I installed Firefox and created a second profile. I set up the automator feature to make things easier. See http://sonnygill.net/mac/mac-multiple-firefox-profiles/ (from aurimas above).

4. I installed Zotero for Firefox. At one point, it asked me if I wanted to sync it with stand alone-- I choose NO.

5. I set up the second profile in Firefox to sync with the professor's account. I synced it to make sure all was working.

5. I synced the stand alone with my account to make sure it was working. Since the libraries had merged in my library due to my earlier mistake, I had to clean that up. My library, fortunately, had been empty, so I just moved everything into one folder. After I made sure it was all syncing correctly with my account rather than my prof's, I deleted the prof's items from my library.

So far it seems to be working, but if anyone foresees any problems, do let me know.

adamsmith

If you run Standalone and Firefox on separate libraries (i.e. you tell Zotero to not share libraries on install), I don't even see why you need two Firefox profiles, but in either case what you're doing will work, yes.