Zotero Google Drive/Dropbox/Box

Sunita Barve · May 23, 2017

I am trying to learn zotero and while going through it have doubts on few of the following points can someone clear these points

1. Which version of zotero works better firefox addon or standalone.
2. What is best option to store pdf files on Google Drive/Dropbox. Can one put up all pdfs on common server of an institute.
3. I tried downloading Google Drive desktop but how same thing can be used in linux. Google drive is not available on linux.
4. What is difference then for webdev. What is use of Webdev.

bwiernik · May 23, 2017

1. The Firefox version will be discontinued soon, so I recommend just starting with the Standalone version.

2. You can use the Zotfile plugin to store your PDFs in a cloud storage or network folder. Note that you absolutely should not store the Zotero database itself in such a folder--that will definitely lead to corruption and problems. In general, I strongly recommend using Zotero's native storage facilities. Purchasing additional storage space for PDFs is comparatively low cost and worth the convenience and additional functionality (e.g., group PDF attachments, viewing files on Zotero.org website) it provides.

3. This forum really isn't the place to go to for Google Drive support.

4. You can also use a WebDAV service (e.g., Box.com, some institutional storage servers) to store PDFs (rather than Zotero's native storage or the Zotfile plugin). You can check if your cloud storage server allows WebDAV, then set it up in Zotero's settings. Note that (like Zotfile with Dropbox, etc.) WebDAV only works with files in My Library (not Groups) and can't be viewed on Zotero.org. Again, my main recommendation is to use Zotero's native file storage capacities.

Sunita Barve · May 23, 2017

Thanks for the reply. I wish to demonstrate how zotero is useful but while doing so I was trying to figure out what is best option available to store say data of around 10 GB so that users will atleast start using zotero. Because 300 MB is really a very small storage. If again users can easily sync files through Google though this is not the best option but majority of people use Google hence wanted to understand how pdfs can be synced on Google Drive whether we install on Linux/Firefox.

bwiernik · May 23, 2017

You can demonstrate how Zotero is useful without file syncing at all. And for demonstration purposes, 300 mb can show how file syncing works. You can also use a WebDAV enabled cloud drive if you need a free solution for more storage. The problem with Google Drive/Dropbox is that they do not support WebDAV, so setting them up to work with Zotero is more involved. The easiest method is to use the Zotfile plugin for Zotero.