pdfs will not open in Foxit

RobertK68

Hello, I am a new user. Sorry if this is not a good question, but I didn't find it searching this discussion forum. I use Foxit to annotate pdfs. I have just downloaded Zotero to help me with my PhD. In preferences I managed to find, after a long time, open with Foxit Reader. But when I double-click, the pdf is still opened in the browser (Chrome). Why? This still happens after restarting.
2nd question: can Zotero also extract the annotations (highlights) I made in Foxit?
After installing the Zotfile and restarting, the 'Extract Annotations' remains greyed out for all my files, so it seems not. It would be very helpful if I could do that.
I use Windows 10 Home and Foxit version 9.0.1

dstillman

If you set a different PDF reader in the General pane of the preferences, PDFs should open using that, and if that's not happening we'd want to see a Debug ID for double-click an item and having the PDF open in Chrome.

We can't help with ZotFile, but the Zotero beta adds a new PDF reader with support for annotations, including adding annotations to notes.

RobertK68

Thank you @dstillman . Here is the Debug ID: D895211924
I hope you can help me solve this!
I could send you a screenshot of the preferences/general dialogue box, where it correctly says "open PDFs using" and then the FoxIt icon appears.
I just double checked the target exe file, it really does open FoxIt correctly.

In the meanwhile, I'll check out your beta version PDF reader. Thanks for letting me know.

RobertK68

I have downloaded the beta version but when I double-click on a PDF file in the central pane it still tries to open a browser window!

dstillman

You have to enable the new PDF reader from the preferences.

RobertK68

Update: by double clicking on other pdfs in my library, I found out that some of them do open in FoxIt (not the Zotero beta version pdf reader). So what happened is that the pdfs that I added to my library by providing a DOI, when I double click them, link to my University online library (through the browser) while those that I have added by using the Chrome connector tool open in my designated reader. Moreover, with the latter the Zotfile 'extract annotations' function does work (not with the former). So although not everything is clear yet, I'm getting there

dstillman

It’s just a question of whether there are actually PDFs stored in Zotero, which you can tell just by looking at the items list. If there’s no file, it will use the URL or DOI when you double-click, and none of the attachment-related functions would be relevant.

Add Item by Identifier generally won’t be able to save a PDF unless an open-access copy is available or you’re on campus or connecting via a system-wide proxy or VPN that gives you access.

RobertK68

Thanks I understood now that you can see whether there is an attachment (blue dot) or not. I have downloaded about 1000 pdfs from my university library, now I have to find out how I can add those to my Zotero library. If I have any trouble I'll search this forum for replies.
Many thanks