Deleting Duplicate Files

sdiallo1
Hello,

I have over 450 files and I have noticed that some of them are duplicates. Is there an easy way to delete these duplicates or do I have to do it manually?
  • bwiernik
    You can select multiple items, right click, and choose Merge Items. You can also open the Duplicate Items collection in the left pane and merge items there. If you mean Duplicate attachments attached to the same item, there isn't an automated way to delete or merge them at this time. But you can go the the main My Library view and type '+' which will expand all of the items and let you quickly see which have duplicates.
  • dmhowcroft
    Is there a way to set Zotero to remove missing files from your collection?

    I have >400 duplicate files in my library (>550 MB of data!) and don't have the time to go through manually removing these duplicate items. I found, however, that the `fdupes` commandline tool can remove the duplicate files. If I use that, though, then files are immediately redownloaded the next time I sync, which defeats the purpose of this de-cluttering. If I can set Zotero to automatically ignore missing files for one sync (and update its DB accordingly), then I could use this automated solution for my problem.
  • bwiernik
    Not within Zotero, no. But you can change your file sync settings to Download Files As Needed, which will prevent Zotero from re-downloading the file unless you explicitly try to open it.
  • dmhowcroft
    Okay. Is there a DB query I could run to then remove the sub-items for files which no longer exist?

    Thanks for your help!
  • dmhowcroft
    Does anyone have tips for removing such items from the DB more automatically without breaking Zotero?
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