Zotero 5.0 Everything now saving to "My Library"

I have upgraded to Zotero 5 and installed connectors for Firefox and Safari.

I have a number sub folders under "My Library" for my personal research as well as three group libraries attached to my account for collaboration with colleagues.

On the old Zotero for firefox, items would automatically save to whatever folder I had active or highlighted prior to clicking the icon to import. Now all items seem to go directly only to My Library which necessitates a manual cut and paste into group libraries if that is my intended destination. Is this a bug or am I missing something in the way browser connectors work differently to the old Zotero for Firefox version?
  • This should work as before. Can you describe step by step what's going on?
  • Sure!

    Mac OS10.11.6
    Safari 10.1.2 (zotero connector installed)
    Firefox 55.0.2 (zotero connector installed)
    Zotero 5.0.11

    1) Launch Zotero. Click sync to ensure all libraries are up to date.
    2) In left hand pane, click on one of my group (shared) libraries "Axxx Publications" and confirm that I can view items correctly in that library. This library is the intended destination for a journal article I wish to add.
    3) Double check that the library name is highlighted and items from that library are showing in the centre pane.
    4) Using safari, navigate via doi to the paper I wish to import into zotero
    5) Click the Zotero connector icon which correctly shows the image for a journal article.
    6) Import commences and screen dialogue states "Importing item [xzy] into My Library"
    7) Grumble. Drag from my Library into correct group library and delete from My Library.
    8) Repeat 1 - 7 to make sure I haven't made a mistake. Import behaves in the same manner.
    9) Wonder if just Group Libraries are misbehaving, so repeat 1-7 again, this time highlighting one of the sub-libraries under My Library as the intended import destination. These sub libraries are personal only, not shared with any groups. Once again, import goes only to "my Library" and not into the desired, highlighted sub-library.
    10) Post request for help on Zotero forums :-)

    I am very appreciative of how proactively these forums are monitored and requests are responded to.
  • I can't reproduce this. Does this happen from any site? E.g., an Amazon product page?
  • It was happening from a variety of sites: regular webpages, academic journal sites, library sites, etc.

    I think I traced the problem eventually: I have two user accounts on my mac. If both accounts are logged in (but one inactive in the background) and zotero isn't shut down in the inactive one, it causes the import behaviour outlined above. So moral of the story is to ensure only one instance of zotero is active at any one time on a mac with multiple user accounts.
  • edited August 23, 2017
    Ah, yeah, that would do it — and Zotero 5.0 auto-sync will pull down changes immediately, which makes it seem like you're saving to the other one.

    There's actually a workaround here if you want. You can change the httpServer.port hidden pref in one of the instances — incrementing it by one will do — and then make a similar change to the connector.url hidden pref in the connector for that user account (instructions to access those at the bottom of the page, though hard to do currently in Safari, so if you use Safari in only one account, leave that one at the default).

    You'll need to restart Zotero and the browser in question after making these changes.
  • Thanks dstillman. I'm reluctant to go tinkering around under the bonnet, so will stick to making sure I only have one instance of Zotero running on my machine at a time.
Sign In or Register to comment.