Change in saving PDF

wqmul
Previously when a PDF was open in Chrome and I clicked to save it, it would simply save as a PDF file in Zotero and I could drag it under another item (usually a related webpage).

Now, when I save PDFs, for many PDFs they are automatically saved under a "Journal Article" item, Library Catalog Zotero.

How can I disable that new behaviour please? (usually the PDFs I want to save are not in fact journal articles).

This adds an extra step everytime I save a PDF, as I now have to drag the PDF to where I actually want it, then delete the unwanted new item.

Thank you.
  • dstillman
    This is PDF metadata retrieval, and it's been automatically run on new items for the last four years:

    https://www.zotero.org/support/retrieve_pdf_metadata

    As explained there, you'll get high-quality metadata for most academic PDFs. If you see "Library Catalog: Zotero", Zotero wasn't able to find high-quality metadata and just extracted some basic info (e.g., title).

    If you're not happy with the metadata for a specific file, you can right-click on the parent item and select Undo Retrieve Metadata.

    You can disable automatic retrieval from the General pane of the preferences.
  • wqmul
    Thank you Dan. I've been using Zotero for years but didn't see that till recently, I suspect because I had to install Zotero on a new PC and the default settings were different (it must have been disabled on my previous PC). I've now disabled automatic retrieval from the preferences.

    A related query on PDFs, which I had asked about a while back - if you rightclick a PDF and choose Create Parent Item, is there a way to disable the (newish, last couple of years) box that now appears for entering a DOI etc, and go straight to selecting Manual Entry? I recall you said this was being worked on, any news please, if it's possible to immediately create a parent item without entering DOI, could you tell me now? I can't find anything on that in the preferences in v5.0.96.3.

    Most of the PDFs I save are not academic papers or journal articles, more consultation papers and the like, so I attach them to the related webpage, or create a new parent item for them.

    Thank you.
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