PDFs not opening with zotfile

I have Zotero stand-alone (most recent version, in windows 10), and are migrating from Mendeley. Zotfile is installed as an add-on in my firefox browser and via add-ons within Zotero.

I can not view/annotate PDFs in Zotfile, they continued to open in acrobat. So I tried the following:

1. I have followed the instructions here: https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/file_handling_issues
- no change

2. Changed PC settings and file associations to open PDFs via Firefox (was this necessary?), they open within firefox but still using acrobat.

3. I changed the pdf viewer within firefox to "firefox" from adobe (was this necessary?), though zotfile is installed there was no option to view pdfs using zotfile.

After doing that opening PDFs from within Zotero crashed firefox (multiple windows trying to open), so I'm back at point 2 again. Any suggestions? Is this a Zotfile rather than Zotero issue?
  • You misunderstand what Zotfile is/does. Zotfile mainly does the following things (combined with some other smaller convenient features):

    1. It allows you to rename and move PDFs saved in Zotero easily
    2. It allows you to extract annotations created with (almost) any PDF reader from PDFs

    It is not a PDF reader and thus wouldn't change how you open PDFs on your computer nor would you be able to select it to open PDFs. You can use any number of PDF readers -- Adobe, Foxit, pdfXchange (or preview on Mac) to annotate PDFs. As long as you save the annotated PDF to the same location (which isn't the default in the most recent versions of acrobat), you'll be able to get the annotations via Zotfile.
  • Got it! Thanks for clarifying.
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