Moving from Zotero storage to Dropbox with Zotfile

whuber

Hello,

Until there's an iPad app, my workflow now makes it more sensible to keep all my PDFs and other attached documents in a human-readable folder hierarchy on Dropbox (and to stop paying for storage.) Is there a best/most reliable way to do this? I'm sure it would involve Zotfile, but a have thousands of PDFs and would like to find a way that does this without having to over-supervise the migration.

adamsmith

Select all --> Manage Attachments --> Rename attachments
in ZotFile and make sure to set up your Dropbox folder as the Linked File Relative Base Directory on all synced computer in the Zotero preferences.

Test with a handful files that this works as expected, then select and do for the whole library.

(I'll note that I think this is probably a bad idea. Linked files work fine, but between the fact that they don't get deleted with the deletion of Zotero items and the fact that it breaks sharing in groups, they're a good bit clumsier than stored files)

bwiernik

As an alternative to moving everything, I might suggest using Zotfile’s Send to Tablet feature to send sets of PDFs back and forth for reading.

whuber

Hi bwiernik, I had been doing that, but it relies on my knowing what I want to have available while at desktop. As more and more of my writing workflow is on the iPad, it makes less sense, especially as I am already paying for 2TB of Dropbox storage.