Linked File Question

I've been reading documentation & forums for an hour, and still can't find straightforward directions.

***Here's what I want to have:

- all my citations created by and stored in Zotero.
- all files (they're pdfs) stored in Google Drive and no files stored in Zotero. (I don't want files duplicated from their original location, simply linked/referenced.)
- all citations (NOT the pdfs) viewable from both computer & ipad.

***Here's what I've done:

Under Advanced:
- set the Linked Attachment Base Directory to the Google drive folder with the pdfs.
- kept the Data Directory location on my computer as the Zotero folder under my username.

Under Sync:
- Linked my account to Zotero
- Kept checked: Sync Automatically & Sync Full-Text Content
- Unchecked both selections under File Syncing

***Here's I can't get to work:

- I don't know how to get a pdf into Zotero so it doesn't wind up duplicating the pdf to my computer's Zotero folder. Dragging & dropping duplicated it.
- I don't know how to get all the pdfs that are already in my Google Drive folder into Zotero so it can look up citations. They're in many, many subfolders.
- I don't know how to use Zotfile, despite how many times it's mentioned as being useful. For what? It does a lot of things and none of them seem to apply to Linked Files.
- I'd love to see a page that defines what Zotero calls "files", "items", "independent file items", "parent items", "attachment files", "data", "full-text content", "linked file attachments", "data location".

Suggestions with exact steps would be appreciated! Thanks.
  • Most of this is covered here:
    https://www.zotero.org/support/attaching_files#adding_files

    in particular how to get files to link instead of storing a copy.

    How to link large amounts of file depends a bit. If you want the folder structure duplicated in Zotero collections, then I don't think there's much of an alternative to going sub-folder by subfolder. If you just want the files in Zotero, you can use your operating system's virtual folder / saved search function, search for all PDFs within the GDrive folder and then link to all of them at once.

    ZotFile comes in mainly as you add new items to Zotero. By default, it will store those in its data directory. ZotFile can automatically convert them and turn them into linked files in a custom location.
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