Zotero does delete the item, but not the file

86ul

Hello Fellow users of Zotero,

When I delete an item in the Bin of Zotero 5.0.96.3 on a Mint 20.2, the corresponding file on the drive is not deleted too. Thus while I delete an item, the file stays on my drive. Is this a correct behaviour of Zotero, or should Zotero also delete the corresponding file on my drive?

If this is a normal behaviour, is there an option in Zotero, to also delete the corresponding file on my drive? Right now, I have files on my Zotero drive, that have no Zotero item, because I have deleted these items in the past.

EDIT: Zotero does the same, when I 'delete' a file of an item. It is deleted in Zotero, but not on my drive.

adamsmith

Two things:
1. You need to empty the Zotero trash before Zotero deletes a file

2. Zotero only deletes stored files, not linked files.

86ul

Thanks for your quick reply.

As I have special drive for Zotero and use Zotfile to attach a file to an item and/or rename a file, then I have a lot of linked files that belong to a deleted item.

What is the best way to delete these 'item-less' files? One by one manually?

johnmy

For these 'item-less' files, one solution is, set the Custom Location to another path in zotfile preferences, and select all the items in zotero, right click Manage Attachments→Rename Attachments，then the 'item-less' files will be left in the original path and could be deleted, finally you can set the custom location to the original one ,rename and move the items attachments or use the new location.

You can covert the linked files to stored files by Tools→Manage Attachments→Convert linked to Stored Files... before delete the items with linked files, or use https://github.com/redleafnew/delitemwithatt plug-in, but the linked files could not be restored, they will be removed directly, please backup before removing when using this plug-in.

86ul

Thanks for both, @johnmy