New laptop - having trouble syncing PDFs to new Zotero

Hi guys

I just upgraded my laptop to a new one and I'm having trouble getting the PDF attachments in my Zotero library to sync properly. On my previous laptop I was using Zotero 5.0 beta. I use box.com as my Web DAV to store the PDFs.

On the new one here are the steps I followed:
- I installed Zotero 4.0 and then realised it was the wrong version (!). At this point I had already synced the library. I then uninstalled Zotero.
- Installed Zotero 5.0 beta
- The library synced (or perhaps it just used the previous synced library), but PDF attachments did not open
- I uninstalled Zotero 5.0, and found the directory, and deleted that also. Pretty sure there was nothing Zotero left on the laptop (fresh install of windows)
- I reinstalled Zotero 5.0 again. This time the library was empty, and it synced from scratch. After it had finished, SOME PDFs were there?! But many are missing.

I followed the instructions regarding sync with a web DAV service, and the box.com storage system seems to be working right according to the instructions -- all the right files are there. Also on my old laptop, attachments still work okay. So I'm out of ideas. Any suggestions?
  • What is probably happening is that you simply haven't finished syncing down all of the files. In the Zotero sync preferences, change "Sync attachment files" to "As needed". Then try to open a PDF--it should then prioritize that PDF and download it immediately.
  • I tried that but it didn't work. However I think I've sussed out the problem. It looks like I've got two gigs or so of attachments on my old laptop that haven't been uploaded to box.com. So the syncing is working, it's just missing a whole lot of files.

    Doh!
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