Single "Zotero" folder on multi-user Mac?

jimratliff

I have multiple user accounts on my Mac. (They are all me, just my way of keeping large projects separate. I fast-user-switch between them, so it would never be the case that two of these "users" were making Zotero changes at the same time.)

I have a Storage sync plan.

Rather than (a) have each user account have its own synced "Zotero" folder at ~/Zotero, will it cause Zotero any trouble if I instead (b) set up a single storage folder for all the user accounts in the "Shared" director, viz., /Users/Shared?

Thanks!

dstillman

(Just a point of clarification: that's not a "storage" folder. That's the data directory, which has a "storage" subfolder where attachment files are stored.)

What you're describing should work, but you'll need to close Zotero in each account before using it in another account. Otherwise, if you tried to start a second copy, you'd get an error that the database was locked (hopefully, since otherwise you'd get a corrupted database).

jimratliff

Thanks! Both for (a) pointing out that attachment storage was just a subfolder and (b) the problem with the locked database.

That's a sufficient problem (because I can't count on remembering to do that) that I should just provision each user account separately. The amount of redundantly duplicated disk space isn't that much.

I appreciate the information that brought me closure on this.

dstillman

If you're running multiple instances, you'll want to configure Zotero and the Zotero Connector in each account to use a unique port. (The items would still sync right away without that, but it would be a little more clumsy.) And note the warning there about word processor integration, which may not work with this setup.

If you do this, you'd likely also want to set it to download files "as needed" in the Sync preferences. (Downloaded files will remain unless you do Show File and delete them from the filesystem, but an upcoming version will offer automatic purging of synced files to conserve local disk space.)

jimratliff

Thanks! I totally would have missed this wrinkle but for your post.

emilianoeheyns

I've just used separate groups for separate projects, even if I'm the only one in the group.