Importing BibTex from clipboard

mgbelge

I'm getting an error when importing BibTex reference from clipboard (uisng Ctrl+Shift+V or from the menu).

The error pop-up says: An error occurred while trying to import the selected file. Please ensure that the file is valid and try again.

I've tested on the following google scholar citations:
@inproceedings{hari2008use,
title={On the use of dirac delta distribution in transformation of random variables},
author={Hari, BS and Venugopalakrishna, Y},
booktitle={14th National Conference on Communications, IIT Bombay, Mumbai, AIAA},
volume={7211},
pages={2008},
year={2008}
}
@article{argyriou2008convex,
title={Convex multi-task feature learning},
author={Argyriou, Andreas and Evgeniou, Theodoros and Pontil, Massimiliano},
journal={Machine Learning},
volume={73},
number={3},
pages={243--272},
year={2008},
publisher={Springer}
}

I've then expoerted an item from Zotero (as a bib file) and tried importing it back, didn't work either.
@inproceedings{jenatton_proximal_2010,
title = {Proximal methods for sparse hierarchical dictionary learning},
url = {http://machinelearning.wustl.edu/mlpapers/paper_files/icml2010_JenattonMOB10.pdf},
urldate = {2015-02-26},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 27th {International} {Conference} on {Machine} {Learning} ({ICML}-10)},
author = {Jenatton, Rodolphe and Mairal, Julien and Bach, Francis R. and Obozinski, Guillaume R.},
year = {2010},
pages = {487--494},
file = {Jenatton et al. - 2010 - Proximal methods for sparse hierarchical dictionar.pdf:/home/magda/Zotero/storage/BMKTVFMT/Jenatton et al. - 2010 - Proximal methods for sparse hierarchical dictionar.pdf:application/pdf}
}

I've submitted an error report with ID: 2076916788

Thanks.

adamsmith

Yes, that should definitely work and it's not a general problem.
Dan may be able to say more after looking at the error report, but until then -- could you try disabling all other add-ons (especially Zotero-related ones like autoexporting or better bibtex) you may have installed, restart Firefox/Zotero and try again?

dstillman

Nothing relevant in the error report. Try resetting your translators from the Advanced → Files and Folders pane of the Zotero preferences.

mgbelge

Thanks, problem solved.
It was the Better bibtex add-on which was not installed correctly (hm ... makes me wonder): Better bibtex did exist in the list of export options but if I tried exporting, it crashed reporting an error. Also, at this point Better Bibtex didn't show up in the list of plug-ins and neither I was able to configure it from the Zotero preferences tab (strange).
I've reinstalled Better bibtex and importing/exporting works ok now.

dstillman

BBT overrides the default version of the BibTeX translator, so any problems it causes persist after it's removed.

emilianoeheyns

BBT doesn't do that anymore; it has it's own translator IDs, and cleans up its translators on uninstall. Removing BBT should also remove the bundled translators -- if not, that's a bug.