Zotero Storage File Names?!

laakeay

I have been looking for a way to index my Zotero pdfs to my DEVONthink, which is simple enough. My issue is that the file structure that Zotero uses is just ridiculous. Pdfs are stored in folders with completely arbitrary numbers and this is opposite of useful for me.

What can I do about this? I Ideally, I would have folders hierarchically structured: folder "A", folder "B", folder "C", etc., then in each folder have subfolders (for individual authors) with author "LAST NAME_FIRST INITIAL".

What can I do about this moving forward?

Thanks all.

P.S. I am not very tech savvy so bear with me here.

La

bwiernik

The Zotfile plugin can do what you're looking for:
http://zotfile.com

laakeay

Thanks for the reply bwiernik.

Can it change the name of each file folder that is storing each individual pdf? I am already having zotfile change the names of my pdfs themselves, but I was not aware that it can actually change the names of the folders each pdf is stored in...

bwiernik

You can change the setting in Zotfile to store PDFs as linked files in a single folder with sub folders as you desire, rather than storing them within Zotero's native management.

Personally, I have just decided that I never intend to work with my 20,000+ PDF files outside of a reference management program and don't worry about how they are stored under the hood.