Removing files from Standalone but NOT online

emilyjweisenberger

The hard drive on my computer is full because I have too many PDFs saved onto the standalone. I downloaded a lot for a research project and now I want them all gone! The catch is that I share the library with a researcher who still wants the documents. We share them online so I want to be able to delete all the files in our shared library without affecting the one online. I may or may not be syncing my library with hers again in the future, so this makes me worried. How do I do this?

adamsmith

So this is a group? And do you also have a personal library for which you want to keep the attachments?

emilyjweisenberger

It is a group. I do have a small personal library, which would be good to keep, but at this point I'm okay with losing if I have to.

adamsmith

depending on what exactly you want, it's not super easy, but it's doable.
There are two components to the solution:
1. Turn off file sync for groups (the bottom check mark) in the sync tab of the preferences or set it to "as needed" (the latter will download individual files if you try to open them).

2. In order to delete the attachments on your harddisk but not online, the important thing is that you need to delete them via your operating system (i.e. Finder on Mac, Explorer on Windows), _not_ with Zotero.
Several options (all of these rely on closely following the instructions, so please read carefully):
a) Deleting the local copy of all attachments:
Find your Zotero data directory:
https://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data
in it, there's a folder called "storage". Delete all its contents.
This will also delete local copies in your library. Provided those are stored online (check before), you'll be able to sync those back down later.
b) Delete individual files:
click on "Show File" in Zotero for any attachment you want to delete locally. A folder in your operating system opens. Delete its contents.
c) A hybrid solution: you can also search the data folder with your operating system, e.g. restricting the search to just PDFs and then delete files from the result screen. Again--this is _not_ a Zotero search. You'd use the search utility built into Windows/Mac OS

benjsmith

Just posting to say: kudos, and this was exactly the solution i was looking for to solve my hard disk space woes!

jessriedel

Is this still the recommended strategy? I would like to remove the local copies of PDFs for one library but not another. That means I can't just delete the "Storage" folder on my hard drive, since it would delete local copies of PDFs from all libraries. And both my libraries are too big to make deleting PDFs by hand feasible.

bwiernik

That’s still the recommended strategy. I suggest deleting the files from storage for all libraries, then re-downloading the ones you need for the one library.

jessriedel

Thanks for your quick response. Obviously I'd love to eventually have a more elegant solution than re-downloading several GBs of PDFs, but I understand this is not too big a burden (it doesn't require user attention) and there are more pressing features to implement.

dstillman

It will soon be possible to configure how many days to keep files in each library when using “download as needed” mode.