Bad characters in titles

I got this error message:

"The filename 'Backhaus et al. - 2002 - Testretest reliability and validity of the Pittsb.pdf' contains invalid characters.

Rename the file and try again. If you rename the file via the OS, you will need to relink it in Zotero."

I deleted the paper in my zotero library but the message didn't go away. I opened preferences/advanced and clicked on "Show Data Director" and found the pdf in question on my hard disk in the file manager (thunar). The strange character was a question mark which was a stray mark of some kind as it is not in the title of the paper itself. I deleted the actual pdf and searched for more copies. I found none. Unfortunately, the message continues to pop up, but only on one of three machines that I use to access Zotero. This occurs on a mchine running Zotero as a Firefox add-on using Gentoo Linux as the operating system. I am not getting this error message on my Windows 7 laptop or my other Gentoo Linux box. I logged into zotero.org, and the paper is no longer listed in my account anywhere.

How do I get rid of this message or fix the underlying problem? Thank you!
  • edited September 21, 2016
    You need to empty the trash after deleting the item in Zotero. (That would also have deleted the file.)

    Note, though, that you could also have just renamed it.
  • So simple. Thank you.

    I was going to re-enter it from pubmed. The strange characters came from the journal website. I think you are right, renaming would have been easier in retrospect although if there were a PMC number I would still have needed to get that from pubmed as journal websites often don't have those numbers.

    Thanks again!
  • Do you have a URL to reproduce this? We'd want to fix it not to import bad data if possible.
  • Always glad for an opportunity to help.

    Now that I can fix the problem easily, I reproduced it from this website:

    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022399902003306

    Downloading the file manually did not create a problem as I could save with whatever name I wanted on my hard disk.
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