Migrating PDFs from iCloud to Dropbox with Zotfile

shawnmjones

Greetings,

I have a Zotero account for syncing reference metadata.

On laptop A, I have a working Zotero installation where the attachments were renamed using ZotFile to point at an iCloud folder. I can open these attachments fine.

Upon setting up laptop B, I logged into my Zotero account and synced all metadata. That worked great. Laptop B will not have access to iCloud, so I copied all attachments to a Dropbox folder. The folder structure is exactly the same, but the base directory is different. I have manually configured ZotFile to match on both machines, with the exception of the base directory. Zotero on laptop B cannot find the attachments.

How do I inform ZotFile/Zotero about the location of the attachments on Laptop B?

Thanks in advance,

Shawn

shawnmjones

Perhaps I have not supplied enough information.

I am on macOS 10.14.6 and am running Zotero 5.0.76.

My PDFs copied from iCloud are now stored in /Users/smjones/Dropbox/Zotero-PDFs.

In Zotero, I visited Preferences->Advanced and chose the Files and Folders tab. I set the Linked Attachment Base Directory to the Zotero-PDFs path above.

In ZotFile preferences, I selected the General Settings tab. Under Location of Files, I chose Custom Location and set that to the same Zotero-PDFs path above. I ensured that "Use subfolder defined by" was set to /%A/%a/%y, the same value between the two machines.

When I right-click an existing entry, and select "View PDF", I get a "File Not Found" message. I could chose "Locate..." and direct Zotero to the PDF, but I have 1245 references in my library and it would be quite tedious to go through each one.

If I right-click an existing entry and chose Manage Attachments->Rename Attachments, then I get the message "Attachments skipped because they are top-level items, snapshots or the file does not exist."

Thus, I assume that somehow I did not inform ZotFile or Zotero of the proper path to the attachments.

Any suggestions?

adamsmith

The ZotFile settings don't matter for where Zotero is looking for linked files. You need to have the base directory set on both machines to the respective folder holding the PDFs. Is that the case?
And the folder has the same subfolder structure on both machines?

If the answer to both is yes, the easiest would be to install Zutilo to inspect where Zotero is actually looking for the files on B https://github.com/willsALMANJ/Zutilo

shawnmjones

Thank you very much adamsmith!

In addition to displaying the paths, Zutilo allows me to change the paths en masse which helped me solve the problem.

For future readers:
1. I installed the Zutilo plugin from https://github.com/willsALMANJ/Zutilo/releases
2. I restarted Zotero
3. I chose Tools->Zutilo Preferences
4. I chose the User interface tab
5. Under Show attachments and Modify attachments, I selected "Zutilo context menu"
6. I closed the Zutilo Preferences
7. In Zotero, I selected all of my references and right-clicked to choose Zutilo->Modify attachment paths
8. The first dialog asked for the old partial path to the attachments - here I pasted the path to the iCloud folder and clicked OK
9. The second dialog asked for the new partial path to use to replace the old partial path - here I pasted the path to the Dropbox folder and clicked OK

That's it, now the attachments work again!

Thanks again!