Safari connector saves to Zotero on wrong Mac account

shallberg
Hi,

So I’ve set up Zotero 5 on two different Mac accounts on the same Mac (Mac os 10.13, Zotero in shared /Applications folder). My problem is the following:

When 1) opening Zotero on user account A, and 2) fast switching to user account B and opening Zotero there, the Safari connector saves new entries to Zotero on account A. If I switch back to user account A and quit Zotero, and then use the Safari connector again when back on account B, all is well.

Any idea what’s causing this, and how I can fix it without having to quit Zotero on one account? Account A is logged in to a Zotero.org account, while B is not. Databases are stored in two separate places.
  • dstillman
    edited October 3, 2017
    You have to change Zotero and the Connector on one of the accounts to use a different port for communication. You can do this with the extensions.zotero.httpServer.port hidden pref in Zotero and the connector.url pref in the connector. Just incrementing that number by 1 in one of the accounts would be sufficient.

    Note that word processor integration uses a different mechanism, and it's not currently possible to point that at a specific instance of Zotero.

    (In case it's relevant, note that you can also just use Zotero with multiple profiles in the same user account by using the -P flag at the command line, the same as in Firefox, and that would let you keep both open in the same user account.)
  • shallberg
    Ah, so if I understand you correctly, it’s possible to fix the safari issue as per your instructions, but I’d still come up against the same problem when writing and citing in word?
  • dstillman
    Unfortunately yes.
  • shallberg
    I see. And the -P flag method does not apply when on separate Mac accounts?
  • dstillman
    No, because it's already using the default profile directory within the user's ~/Library/Application Support/Zotero.
  • fhjoyce13
    Is there a similar solution for Windows? I have Zotero installed on two different user accounts on the same machine, and when I'm in account B, Zotero connector saves items to my library on Windows account A...
  • dstillman
    @fhjoyce13: It's the same process. See Multiple Instances.
  • fhjoyce13
    Thanks! I should have used better search terms.
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