Alternative to drag-and-drop?

chooyanmin

I can drag-and-drop multiple PDF files from my Windows Explorer windows into Zotero (and Zotero then adds them to my collections and retrieves the corresponding metadata where possible).

Is there another way to perform this "bulk import" action?

The reason I ask is that:

(1) When I tried to drag-and-drop "too many" (3000+ PDFs), it didn't work (there was simply no response from Zotero).
(2) I then tried to drag-and-drop a 100+ PDFs at a time. Initially it works, but after a few goes, the drag-and-drop feature seems to stop working altogether (even when I try to drag-and-drop just one PDF at a time). I then have to restart Zotero for it to work again.

I would thus like to know if there's some way other than drag-and-drop I could try. (I thought it might be under something like File > Import, but that does something else.)

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Is there perhaps some option where I can simply select a folder, then Zotero goes through all the PDFs in that folder?

dstillman

Initially it works, but after a few goes, the drag-and-drop feature seems to stop working altogether (even when I try to drag-and-drop just one PDF at a time).

Could we see a Debug ID for that?

I would thus like to know if there's some way other than drag-and-drop I could try.

New Item (green plus button) → "Store Copy of File…" is equivalent to dragging files to Zotero. There shouldn't really be a difference, though.

chooyanmin

> Could we see a Debug ID for that?

Done: D1143391774

> New Item (green plus button) → "Store Copy of File…" is equivalent to dragging files to Zotero.

Thanks for that. However there seems to be an even lower limit of the number of files I can select—about 70 when I tried (I use Windows 10). When I try selecting more, the field "File name:" simply goes blank. So this doesn't really improve on my problem.

dstillman

If you're not interested in a storage subscription, you should disable file syncing in the Sync pane of the preferences. You're at your file sync quota, so nothing is being uploaded anyway, and leaving that on requires Zotero to do more work on every sync. With a lot of files, that could cause some slowdowns. (We should be able to optimize that further, but you'll also keep getting a warning on every sync about hitting your quota.)

See if that helps.

chooyanmin

I just want to upload the links to the files and have Zotero grab the metadata. This can all be done on my PC, no?

dstillman

File syncing is about what gets uploaded to the Zotero servers. If you don't need to access the PDFs on the web or elsewhere, you can just disable file syncing and access them on your computer. (If you leave regular syncing on, your library data will still sync.)