Deletion workflows.

Greetings,

I am confused about what is supposed to happen regarding the deletion of PDFs in the Zotero PDF workflow. I am running Zotero 5.0.60 on Ubuntu Linux 16.04.

1. Let's assume that I find a DOI of a paper that I want to add to zotero. I then paste it into the lookup box and it successfully returns a citation record which is now part of my library.

2. (Situation A) Now lets assume that I have a local PDF which I intend to drag and drop on the citation from #1. But let's assume that I miss the citation drop zone and the PDF is imported without a parent item. I could select the mis-import and "move item to trash" via the "right click" menu, Lets assume that I choose the "move item to trash" option.... then I go to the trash and delete permanently. Is the PDF supposed to be deleted (not only from the Zotero UI but also the data store? (currently this is not happening for me, the PDF is left in the Zotero file storage area, but the PDF icon is removed from the trash area.)

3. (Variant on A) I can drag the icon from the imported PDF to the citation record, rename the item and then Zotero will rename and then select the whole citation record and "move item to trash" via the "right click" menu. Should the record and the PDF both be deleted?

4. (Situation B) Let's assume I have a PDF associated (or under) a citation record in Zotero. And I unintentionally drag another PDF to the same record. Now, the second dragged PDF will have the same name as the first PDF (in the Zotero UI, but not in the file system, the file system appends a number to the file — 'test' becomes 'test2', etc. )... When I click on the link icon representing the PDF and use the menu to "move item to trash", and then go to the trash and delete permanently. Is the PDF supposed to be deleted? (just the PDF and not the whole record?) (What happens for me is that just the UI element of the second PDF is deleted, the PDF remains in the data store, but now it has no associated record in the Zotero UI.)

If I go to the Trash area in the menu options I see the whole record, not just the PDF that I want to delete. If I click empty trash. What is supposed to happen, is the whole record to be deleted, or just the un-desired PDF? — I see the whole record in the trash but some parts are grayed out — presumably these are the parts of the record which will not be deleted, and after I press delete permanently, only the non-greayed out part is deleted in the UI. (what happens for me is the actual PDF stays in the Zotero PDF store).

Merging

When I have two records each with a file and I merge them. What is supposed to happen? Is one of the files supposed to be renamed (with a numeral attached), and then the new record is supposed to have multiple attachments? or is one attachment supposed to be deleted?

I can provide screenshots or screencast if requested.
Thanks in advance.
  • For most of that, it just sounds like you're using linked files, probably with the ZotFile plugin. Linked files aren't deleted when you delete the attachment from Zotero. That only happens for stored files.
    When I have two records each with a file and I merge them. What is supposed to happen?
    Both attachments are currently kept under the merged record. Nothing is renamed. We'd like to remove duplicate files at some point, but it wouldn't work in a lot of cases due to watermarks and such in gated PDFs.
  • I sincerely hope that there would be a one-click option to remove the redundant PDFs because it is really annoying to see multiple PDFs in one item and make notes in one of them.
  • @dstillman Yes I am using linked files with ZotFile. Thank you for clarifying this. So If I use Zotero "Vanilla" (without Zotfile) then the items will be deleted, but if I don't then Zotfile will not delete them, and I am left with a large PDF store, but "fewer" Zotero entries.
  • It's not really about ZotFile itself, since you can link to files using Zotero itself without ZotFile. The point is just that linked files remain in their original location on your disk and Zotero therefore doesn't delete them, because it's not assumed that they're accessed exclusively by and via Zotero.
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