Zotero Firefox extension folder selection?

nmariano

Hi all, I'm using the Zotero Firefox extension and I have noticed that when using it to export an article to Zotero, sometimes I am given a menu option to select which folder the article goes to and others, it simply exports to a random folder (seemingly the most recently used one?) without giving me the option to select, and then I have to go find it. I would prefer to always be able to select the Zotero location that articles export to. Is there a way to change this?

Thanks!

dstillman

Zotero will always save to the selected collection in Zotero. If you want to choose a different location, all you need to do is click the drop-down menu in the save popup and either choose one of the recently used collections listed there or choose "More…" and choose a different location from the collections tree in the expanded popup. (If you know it's not somewhere you've saved to recently, you can also just click the down-arrow to expand the popup, which is equivalent to "More…".) The selected collection in Zotero is updated when you choose a different target, so if you don't interact with the app further it will in effect save to the most recently used collection.

You could alternatively switch to Zotero first, choose a different collection, and switch back to the browser to save, but there's no reason to do that. The save popup is designed to let you choose a location after clicking the button.

nmariano

Thanks for your response! So the issue is that I do not always get the pop-up that allows me to select a location -- the extension icon will sometimes just change to a green check (indicating the article has been saved) without displaying the pop-up. When I get the pop-up there's no issue, but I just would like it to show every time.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this: "The selected collection in Zotero is updated when you choose a different target, so if you don't interact with the app further it will in effect save to the most recently used collection." Are you saying I can induce the extension to show the pop-up by opening the desktop app?

dstillman

the extension icon will sometimes just change to a green check (indicating the article has been saved) without displaying the pop-up

That's due to a Firefox limitation — we're no longer able to display the save popup when you're a PDF is being viewed directly. (It works fine in Chrome and other browsers.) When possible, you should save from an article page anyway, which will always give you the save popup and also download the PDF if accessible. If there's no article page available and you need to save a PDF directly, and you're using Firefox, you'd want to switch to Zotero first and select a different collection before saving.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this: "The selected collection in Zotero is updated when you choose a different target, so if you don't interact with the app further it will in effect save to the most recently used collection." Are you saying I can induce the extension to show the pop-up by opening the desktop app?

You should have the desktop app open before saving regardless — you won't get the expandable save popup at all if you're saving directly to zotero.org (though that might change in the future). I'm just saying that 1) it saves to the currently selected collection in Zotero and 2) if you choose a different selection from the popup, it changes the selection in Zotero, which implies that that it will always save to the most recently selected collection unless you've changed the collection in Zotero since the last time you saved.

nmariano

Ah, the pop-up only displaying when not viewing PDF directly makes sense, as well as "it saves to the currently selected collection in Zotero". This clears it up, thanks! I will just be sure to select the folder I want to save to in Zotero when saving directly from PDF.