Can you import/sync pre-existing research articles on your computer into a new Zotero account and..?

keomeara

Hi all. I'm new to Zotero and have actually never used any similar tools. I'm also NOT tech savvy!

I'm a masters student and have been using a Mac, but am considering getting a windows computer for research and thesis writing because I've had issues with MS Word on my Mac. Basically I lost work that was in Word, and when I reinstalled everything on my computer to try to solve the problem I lost the hundreds of references/citations I'd made in the master source reference list in MS Word. My questions:

I have hundreds of research articles (in pdf form) on my Mac which I've already marked up/highlighted. Is there a way to import all of those articles I already have on my computer into Zotero?

If I do get a second windows computer is there a way to sync the all the info/articles that I would then have in Zotero on my Mac to my new windows computer?

Thanks for your help!

dstillman

Is there a way to import all of those articles I already have on my computer into Zotero?

https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/importing_formatted_bibliographies

is there a way to sync the all the info/articles that I would then have in Zotero on my Mac to my new windows computer?

https://www.zotero.org/support/sync

dstillman

Oh, sorry, I misread the first part. (What I said would apply if you still had documents with bibliographies of items you wanted to import.)

If you have existing PDFs, you can just drag those into Zotero and Zotero will copy them to its storage directory and try to retrieve metadata for them. That's not the main/preferred way to add things to Zotero, but it should work pretty well.

keomeara

Okay - thank you! I just downloaded today and have been watching some youtube tutorials and am playing around with it - so I will see if I have any more questions on this topic.

However, I have a new question - I also just downloaded the chrome connector and tried to use that to get an article. It pulled the citation into my library from the google search but not the PDF (although I have that marked in the preferences - that it should automatically attach pdfs etc). I'm assuming it's because the pdf isn't free and available on google scholar. I usually get my research though my university's online library - I can sign in and have access to EBSCO and ERIC etc. through my university library. Is there a way to set up Zotero to automatically check my university library databases (without having to log in all the time) in order to find the full-text PDFs? I tried googling this question and checking the Zotero website but haven't been able to find an answer. Maybe it has something to do with the "proxies" in the connector settings? But even if that's where I should add it in, I'm totally clueless as to how to do that. Thanks!

adamsmith

No. It'll typically attach PDFs when you access them through databases that provide access (such as EBSCO), but it can't search your university's databases for them.

keomeara

You guys are so fast! :) So I logged in to my university library and I get this message in the top of the screen: "Zotero detected that you are accessing search.ebscohost.com through a proxy. Would you like to automatically redirect future requests to search .......(database at my university library)" - then it has a button to "accept" and also a button for proxy settings. If I accept will it then automatically search my university library? And if so will it also search google scholar when it might not find it there?

adamsmith

No, Zotero will not typically do anything in any database you're not currently looking at in your browser (there are a couple of exceptions but none of them relate to importing PDFs).
The proxy setting is just a way to more quickly get to resources provided by your library -- Zotero will recognize EBSCO host the next time you navigate to it, even if you're not going through your library and automatically route you through your library's authentication.