Mendeley Import Issue: Only Some Files Not Synced and Thus Not Imported

nategeorge00

Hi,
Thanks for Zotero 6, I am very excited to switch from Mendeley!

I have a pretty large collection in Mendeley (5428 items), with lots of highlights and annotations. I am so happy to report that I was able to switch to Zotero with nearly everything intact.

However, there are 175 references in Mendeley whose files did not upload to their servers, and I can't seem to get them to. Thus when I imported into Zotero, only the references were imported, not the files and annotations.

Any ideas on how to get these remaining files and annotations into Zotero? Would I have to resync the entire library of references and files to get them imported? Or can I just make a collection in Mendeley of the problematic files, then import just that collection into Zotero?

Your help would be much appreciated!

dstillman

Since Mendeley encrypts the local database, the only way to access your data and files is via the Mendeley API, either directly using the main importer in Zotero 6 or by syncing to an old Mendeley version. So that means syncing everything up to the Mendeley servers first.

Or can I just make a collection in Mendeley of the problematic files, then import just that collection into Zotero?

Yes, you can export just those items to BibTeX or RIS and import those, but it has the problems mentioned on our import page — you might lose a little data, you'll lose any PDF annotations, and you'll lose the collection structure.