Convert URL to PDF attachment

simonssim · September 18, 2015

Hi!
We're in the process of merging personal libraries in our research department. One user has added links to locally stored PDF's by adding "file:///C:\..pdf" to the URL field of an item. Unless I'm mistaken, this will not be understood by Zotero natively or the Zotfile extension.

Is there any script that could read that URL and copy the PDF as attachment into Zotero? Needless to say, the library in question is about 2000 items, so manual work is.. not an option. Well if we fix 20 each day it will take less than a month, so maaybe. I prefer a script though! :)

Thanks for any help!

adamsmith · September 18, 2015

If you're merging libraries, you could consider exporting to RIS and then relabeling the UR field as L1 (I think) and then re-import. I think that should work, though may need some trial and error.
Depends on the nature of the metadata: there's some minimal data loss involved.

simonssim · September 18, 2015

Of course! I will try that on Monday. Thanks, have a good weekend!

simonssim · September 22, 2015

Yes, can confirm that it was a simple as replacing [UR - file:///] with [L1 - ]. Importing the RIS back into Zotero adds the files as attachments (at least Zotfile did that automatically for me). Zotfile even renamed the files on import.