Upgrade Storagebroken attachments
Hi
I'm sure there have been plenty of discussions on the issue of broken attachments and how to fix them; but I couldn't find the exact case; so I would ask if you could advise on that or just point me to the right discussion or guide over the internet.
I confess that I never really understood the way Zotero manages attachments and why to use a Linked Attachment Base Directory, nor how do all these great utilities like zutilo or zotfile, etc. work; that's why I always sticked to the default behavior, keeping files in the storage directory under Zotero, with its absolute paths.
Now, for some reason I don't understand, (probably due to the need of moving my database and storage from one PC to a Mac ) I realize that I have more than 2,000 "broken attachments" (I used the the storage scanner add-on);
However, the "broken" attachments are not really broken, they are exactly in the folder they should, but they have a different name, that's why of course I get the "file not found " error message. e.g in the database the path is say:
/Users/Mike/Zotero/storage/XHEIEBJZ/2018_PasoI.pdf
while in reality it is as follow:
/Users/Mike/Zotero/storage/XHEIEBJZ/IFI10801.pdf
Now I can't really remember how could I have done that; the names I see do not follow any possible path or model so I don't really understand How it could happen. I don't remember having used batch functionalities of zotfile or so ; just renamed manually some files using the context menu "rename from parent metadata" so it can't be that.
Whatever the reason, I would like you could help me in fixing that: is there some batch utilities who can automatically fix the wrong path, without having to do it manually ? or point me to some easy guide on how to do that?
and for the future: is there some better way you would suggest to manage my attachments so to avoid this kind of problem (the linked base directory instead of the default storage maybe?) I always thought that sticking to the default would have been the best way.
Thanks for any advice.
Mike
I'm sure there have been plenty of discussions on the issue of broken attachments and how to fix them; but I couldn't find the exact case; so I would ask if you could advise on that or just point me to the right discussion or guide over the internet.
I confess that I never really understood the way Zotero manages attachments and why to use a Linked Attachment Base Directory, nor how do all these great utilities like zutilo or zotfile, etc. work; that's why I always sticked to the default behavior, keeping files in the storage directory under Zotero, with its absolute paths.
Now, for some reason I don't understand, (probably due to the need of moving my database and storage from one PC to a Mac ) I realize that I have more than 2,000 "broken attachments" (I used the the storage scanner add-on);
However, the "broken" attachments are not really broken, they are exactly in the folder they should, but they have a different name, that's why of course I get the "file not found " error message. e.g in the database the path is say:
/Users/Mike/Zotero/storage/XHEIEBJZ/2018_PasoI.pdf
while in reality it is as follow:
/Users/Mike/Zotero/storage/XHEIEBJZ/IFI10801.pdf
Now I can't really remember how could I have done that; the names I see do not follow any possible path or model so I don't really understand How it could happen. I don't remember having used batch functionalities of zotfile or so ; just renamed manually some files using the context menu "rename from parent metadata" so it can't be that.
Whatever the reason, I would like you could help me in fixing that: is there some batch utilities who can automatically fix the wrong path, without having to do it manually ? or point me to some easy guide on how to do that?
and for the future: is there some better way you would suggest to manage my attachments so to avoid this kind of problem (the linked base directory instead of the default storage maybe?) I always thought that sticking to the default would have been the best way.
Thanks for any advice.
Mike
What this looks like to me is that something renamed the files in the database but for some reason didn't actually rename the file proper. I have no idea how that'd have happened nor have I seen this, I believe.
There's no out of the box solution to fixing this, but there may be a scripting option.