Cannot sync with standalone Zotero

MathijsvD

Report ID: 1970562750

Dear community,

I have always used Zotero via and in Firefox. Wanting to use it with another browser (Chrome), I installed the latest version of the standalone Zotero application (OSX) but never got the syncing to work - clicking the sync button simply does nothing - even after reinstalling and making sure no old files were somehow left of an old version. This may be part of the problem as the application even just upon installation already had my user name and password. Syncing and adding items to Zotero works fine in Firefox. The Zotero connector in Chrome works in principle but only for some webpages does it appear in the bar - to the right of the url. As it is I have to stick to Firefox to use Zotero. Any advice on getting it to work for Chrome?

Thanks in advance.

adamsmith

Are you connecting to the internet through a system proxy?
What are examples of pages on which you see a URL bar icon in Firefox but not in Chrome?

MathijsvD

Hi,

Thanks for your questions. I never had problems with syncing at work in Firefox, but I will try at home to see whether my internet connectivity is at fault. Maybe my remark about the URL bar icon wasnt clear. There are .pfd pages that do not give the icon in Chrome but looking at it now there isnt one in Firefox either. This I never noticed as a problem as in Firefox I can just bring up Zotero in the bottom part of the browser, save and file away. With Chrome I wouldnt (yet) know how to accomplish that but in essence I'm not sure how much - if at all - that is related to my no syncing problem for standalone (that I want to use with Chrome connector). I wont be able to get back to this until Monday but thanks in advance for your attention to my conondrum.

adamsmith

In Chrome, for webpages you can right-click --> Save as Zotero Snapshots
For PDFs the handling is a little more clumsy, but you can drag the favicon (the little logo at the _left_ of the URL bar) from Chrome to Zotero Standalone to save a PDF.
This isn't related to syncing at all and sounds like it's working as intended.
Let us know if you manage to successfully sync at home

aurimas

In Chrome, for webpages you can right-click --> Save as Zotero Snapshots
For PDFs the handling is a little more clumsy, but you can drag the favicon (the little logo at the _left_ of the URL bar) from Chrome to Zotero Standalone to save a PDF.

Though, in general, that is not how Zotero is intended to be used. Unless you're dealing with unsupported databases or getting PDFs from some odd places (e.g. email attachments?), you want to use the URL bar icon to import PDFs along with associated metadata. If you're already viewing a PDF, this typically means backing up one page to the abstract or HTML version and then clicking the URL bar icon (the icon is not currently displayed when viewing the PDF directly).