Syncing Question

I'm trying to understand the architecture of Zotero.

I have two MacBookPros: my primary laptop that I use in my office, and a secondary one that I use at home. The Zotero folder with all of my bibliographic data on the primary laptop is housed under "Users/John/Zotero." The Zotero folder on the secondary laptop is empty and is housed under "Users/Mary/Zotero."

When I open Preferences/Sync on my primary laptop, under "Data Syncing" it lists "Username: Mary." This seems counterintuitive because I would have expected it to show "Username: John." I do NOT want the data on my primary laptop to be lost or overwritten!

On the secondary laptop, under Preferences > Sync, there is no information. The Username and Password are empty.

I want the secondary computer to have easy access to whatever Zotero data I archive on my primary laptop. Should I "unlink" the address listed on the PRIMARY laptop (in other words, replace "Mary" with "John" when I unlink)? Should I enter the username and password of the primary computer on the SECONDARY laptop? Should I use the actual account name and password for both? Or is there something else I should be doing?

  • The location of your Zotero data directory, and the name of your macOS user account, doesn't have anything to do with this. The Sync pane is just showing the Zotero username you set up syncing for. If you want to sync, all you need to do is set it up with the same Zotero account on both computers.
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