How to export PDFs from Zotero

tesolchina
It is fairly easy to import PDFs into Zotero and retrieve metadata from the PDFSs. I wonder if there is a straightforward way to extract all the PDFs in my Zotero collection. It seems that each PDF file is kept in a separate folder.
My question is related to my earlier post about developing Zotero into a corpus tool:
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/41660/develop-zotero-into-a-corpus-tool/

It seems that accessing the PDF files would be a first step towards that goal. Of course, texts in PDF are notoriously difficult to manipulate using computers. Any tips for extracting texts from PDFs in Zotero efficiently are also welcome.

Thanks in advance.
  • dstillman
    edited July 31, 2016
    Option 1: Create a virtual folder in your OS for all PDFs within the 'storage' directory in your Zotero data directory. Then you'll just have a flat view of all PDFs in your database. This way is probably easier if you don't need to distinguish between files from different libraries.

    Option 2: Create a saved search in Zotero for [Attachment Content Type] [is] [PDF], save the search, press Cmd-A/Ctrl-A to select the matching items, and drag them to a folder in your filesystem. Note that multi-file dragging may not work on all platforms.

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