Retrieve Metadata

nhilger · January 15, 2015

Hi All,

I am able to use the "retrieve metadata" feature by right-clicking on a PDF that I just dragged into Zotero, and this seems great. But when I already have an article in Zotero (typically transferred from my Mendeley library), and the metadata is wrong, I am not able to access "retrieve metadata" by right-clicking on the PDF file. Is there an easy way to incorporate metadata into correcting a huge batch of articles that were transferred with bad or incomplete metadata?

FYI, I'm a brand new Zotero user. Thanks for any comments on this post.

adamsmith · January 15, 2015

you can't update metadata--neither using PDF metadata, nor any other lookup method. Some version of this is planned, but not going to happen super soon.

You can, individually, drag PDFs away from their parent item (it's a bit finicky but definitely work) and the retrieve metadata as usual, if that's something you're interested in.

nhilger · January 16, 2015

Ok cool, thanks. Yes that workaround sounds useful--can you please elaborate? Drag the pdf where, and replace it with what?

adamsmith · January 16, 2015

you can just drag the pdf away from the item it's attached to so it's a top-level item again. Essentially drag it above it's parent item. Then run "retrieve metadata" on the PDF and delete the former parent item if that's successful.

nhilger · January 16, 2015

Works like a charm. Thanks adamsmith, invisible hand of helpfulness.