Upgrade StorageSwitching from box sync and Papership to linked file attachments in OneDrive and PDF viewer
With box.com about to drop support for webDAV, and the app that I synced to on my iPad and iPhone (PaperShip) long since abandoned by the developer, I’m thinking of changing my workflow to using Linked File Attachments in Zotero, with the PDFs stored in OneDrive with a folder structure maintained by Zotfile that mirrors my Zotero collections, and viewing and annotating PDFs on my iPhone and iPad using the app PDF Viewer
I would welcome some feedback on the steps below to accomplish this task, so as to insure I don’t accidentally lose my annotated PDFs:
1. In preferences for standalone Zotero on my Mac, goto Sync> File Syncing and uncheck the box next to “Sync attachment files in My Library using WebDAV”
2. In Advanced > Files and Folders > Linked Attachment Base Directory, choose a OneDrive folder on my computer called “Zotero PDF’s”
3. In ZotFile preferences, change Location of Files to “Custom Location” and enter same OneDrive Folder as above
4. In ZotFile preferences, check box next to “Use subfolder defined by” and enter “%c”
5. On both iPhone and iPad, enable off-line access within OneDrive app to the entire folder (iPad) or select sub folders (iPhone, where I only need access to manuals, protocols, and a select group of scientific papers that I am actively using)
7. In PDF Viewer app on iPhone & iPad makes sure that OneDrive folders are visibile
I would also welcome alternative suggestions to this plan from others who do annotations on their iPad.
****See comments below for some warnings, and a caveat, if you wish to do this yourself
I would welcome some feedback on the steps below to accomplish this task, so as to insure I don’t accidentally lose my annotated PDFs:
1. In preferences for standalone Zotero on my Mac, goto Sync> File Syncing and uncheck the box next to “Sync attachment files in My Library using WebDAV”
2. In Advanced > Files and Folders > Linked Attachment Base Directory, choose a OneDrive folder on my computer called “Zotero PDF’s”
3. In ZotFile preferences, change Location of Files to “Custom Location” and enter same OneDrive Folder as above
4. In ZotFile preferences, check box next to “Use subfolder defined by” and enter “%c”
5. On both iPhone and iPad, enable off-line access within OneDrive app to the entire folder (iPad) or select sub folders (iPhone, where I only need access to manuals, protocols, and a select group of scientific papers that I am actively using)
7. In PDF Viewer app on iPhone & iPad makes sure that OneDrive folders are visibile
I would also welcome alternative suggestions to this plan from others who do annotations on their iPad.
****See comments below for some warnings, and a caveat, if you wish to do this yourself
If I simply follow the steps in my original post, then will Zotero/Zotfile move all the PDFs to the OneDrive folder, or do I have to initiate that process in some manner?
Thanks to bwiernik for the help, and major props to ZotFile developer jlegewie!
But I have a few warnings for others who wish to attempt this:
1) Make a backup of your entire database AND annotated PDFs so that if you run into any problems, or decide you don’t want to use this new system, you can revert to your old way - https://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data#backing_up_your_zotero_library
2) Initiate the rename/move process on just 50-100 items at a time, because Zotfile may not be able to process some PDFs. In my case it failed to convert only 2 out of more than 1000, but the issue is that you wont get any indication that the rename/move failed. Actually there is a window that pops up as soon as you initiate the renaming/moving, and it will dissappear when the rename/move process is completed if it works… but if it fails to rename/move a file, then Zotfile will NOT rename/move any PDFs after the one it got stuck on. So after each group you process, you need to look back through them to make sure that all the links were created.
3) If any items occur in more than one collection - for example, I tend to create collections for proposals I’m developing, manuscripts I’m writing, and classes I’m teaching, all of which could include some of the same papers - then Zotfile will prompt you to choose which folder you want the file to be stored in, and that can take a long time if you have a bunch of them
4) Most importantly, if you move an existing item to a different collection or subcollection, then you will need to re-iniitate a rename/move in order to have the PDF appear in the correct cloud folder. Similarly, if you delete an item from your collection, then it does not get deleted from the cloud folder - you need to delete the file directly in the cloud folder. I naively hoped that Zotfile would automatically handle such changes… but that’s not the case.