PDFs not loading into Zotero

briennakh
I've been having a really difficult time getting Zotero to sync between my Mac laptop and my iPad. I first tried to use the iOS beta app, which was wonderful until I realized it doesn't sync highlights or annotations, and that I have to pay a lot for storage.

I switched to the symlink syncing approach with Google Drive where I have unlimited storage. I can easily annotate files in my drive using PDF Expert on my iPad, and Zotero picks up on those annotations. This works wonderfully for the files that are already in Zotero. If I download a PDF on my iPad and add it to the Google Drive, it doesn't get synced to the Zotero library.

I created a second folder on my Google Drive, to hold any PDFs that I might download on my iPad. I figured I could open that folder on my computer and load the PDFs into Zotero then. However, when I try to drag and drop a PDF from this Google Drive folder, there's no response from Zotero. I tried to manually load it using the green plus sign > Store copy of file. I have read I shouldn't use the Import option (I've tried anyways), so I'm not sure how I can get the PDF files to be recognized.... They open fine in my Mac otherwise, and I've granted them all permissions in Terminal.
  • briennakh
    edited May 25, 2021
    Rephrasing: Zotero is not recognizing any PDFs that I attempt to drag and drop, regardless of where they are from.
  • briennakh
    Report ID: 2026413125
  • dstillman
    I first tried to use the iOS beta app, which was wonderful until I realized it doesn't sync highlights or annotations
    To be clear, the iOS app absolutely syncs highlights and annotations with the new Zotero PDF reader. But it doesn't save annotations to the file itself. (You can export PDFs with embedded annotations from the desktop app.)
    "Error: Invalid field 'citekey' for base field"
    You're currently getting an error from the Better BibTeX plugin that's affecting many people. There's a new version available that fixes that.

    If you're still having trouble after resolving that, provide another Report ID.
Sign In or Register to comment.