Upgrade StorageQuestions from a new Zotero user
Hey everybody,
I'm a frustrated EndNote user who's finally had enough and decided to move on to a more competitive, less bloated, open-source reference anagement software. I'm new to Zotero, and so far I love it but I have a few unclarities, which I will list below.
- One feature I always thought would be great (which EndNote, needless to say, did not have) is the ability to identify all in-text citations corresponding to a given reference. Is this possible in Zotero?
- If I've managed citations in a document with Zotero, how can I find out in which file/library those citations are located?
- Conversely, given a user-defined Zotero library, how can one know what documents use references from that library?
- If I have a document containing formatted references (as fields, not known what software was used to manage them) and a References list, can I create a Zotero library from those references?
- After importing a few references from Google Scholar and attaching the local PDF file for that corresponds to each reference, I tried a search with a term contained in one of the PDFs. The term was not found, even though the PDF that contained it had editable (i.e. not scanned) text. I then tried with several other words contained in all PDFs, but none were found. This goes for the simple Search, but I also tried the Advanced Search (having selected the Attachment Content field).
This might be a problem with the version I'm using (the 2.0 beta), although I tend to think I'm doing something wrong.
- Where on the hard-drive are Zotero libraries located? For example, EndNote libraries were one .ENL file + one associated folder containing several files. The reason for this question is that, when copying a document to another computer, I need to know what files I need to copy (besides the document itself) in order to also have access to my references from within Firefox|Zotero, on the other computer
- Under Preferences, I did not see any keyboard shortcuts related to word processor integration. Specifically, are there keyboard shortcuts for inserting and editing in-text citations?
Can anyone help with any of these questions? Many thanks in advance.
I'm a frustrated EndNote user who's finally had enough and decided to move on to a more competitive, less bloated, open-source reference anagement software. I'm new to Zotero, and so far I love it but I have a few unclarities, which I will list below.
- One feature I always thought would be great (which EndNote, needless to say, did not have) is the ability to identify all in-text citations corresponding to a given reference. Is this possible in Zotero?
- If I've managed citations in a document with Zotero, how can I find out in which file/library those citations are located?
- Conversely, given a user-defined Zotero library, how can one know what documents use references from that library?
- If I have a document containing formatted references (as fields, not known what software was used to manage them) and a References list, can I create a Zotero library from those references?
- After importing a few references from Google Scholar and attaching the local PDF file for that corresponds to each reference, I tried a search with a term contained in one of the PDFs. The term was not found, even though the PDF that contained it had editable (i.e. not scanned) text. I then tried with several other words contained in all PDFs, but none were found. This goes for the simple Search, but I also tried the Advanced Search (having selected the Attachment Content field).
This might be a problem with the version I'm using (the 2.0 beta), although I tend to think I'm doing something wrong.
- Where on the hard-drive are Zotero libraries located? For example, EndNote libraries were one .ENL file + one associated folder containing several files. The reason for this question is that, when copying a document to another computer, I need to know what files I need to copy (besides the document itself) in order to also have access to my references from within Firefox|Zotero, on the other computer
- Under Preferences, I did not see any keyboard shortcuts related to word processor integration. Specifically, are there keyboard shortcuts for inserting and editing in-text citations?
Can anyone help with any of these questions? Many thanks in advance.
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"- Under Preferences, I did not see any keyboard shortcuts related to word processor integration. Specifically, are there keyboard shortcuts for inserting and editing in-text citations?"
Inserting and Editing citations depends on the word-processor you use. In both Word and OO you need to install the Zotero plug-in (now packaged as a Firefox extension). You can find the links from the Zotero documentation. These both place 4 buttons on the tool-bar. I'd assume you can set up keyboard shortcuts - the mechanism would depend on the word-processor - but haven't personally been motivated to try.
Zotero, under Gears>Preferences>Keyboard has two shortcuts you can define for copying citations and references to the clipboard, but these operate within Firefox/Zotero, not Word or OO (although normally you'd follow by pasting from the clipboard in the word-processor).
"- Where on the hard-drive are Zotero libraries located? For example, EndNote libraries were one .ENL file + one associated folder containing several files. The reason for this question is that, when copying a document to another computer, I need to know what files I need to copy (besides the document itself) in order to also have access to my references from within Firefox|Zotero, on the other computer"
You can set the location as you wish, but most people seem to leave it set to the default, which is below your Firefox profile directory. The easiest way to find it is to use Gears>Preferences>Advanced>Storage Location>Show Data Directory. This will open an Explorer window, and shifting to Folders view will let you see where you are. I usually package zotero.sqlite and storage into a ZIP or RAR to move it to another "Zotero". On that system do the same trick of showing the data directory and unzip your archive there.
Alternatively (and better, of course) you could set up Sync :-)
- After importing a few references from Google Scholar and attaching the local PDF file for that corresponds to each reference, I tried a search with a term contained in one of the PDFs. The term was not found, even though the PDF that contained it had editable (i.e. not scanned) text. I then tried with several other words contained in all PDFs, but none were found. This goes for the simple Search, but I also tried the Advanced Search (having selected the Attachment Content field).
This might be a problem with the version I'm using (the 2.0 beta), although I tend to think I'm doing something wrong.
Most likely you haven't enabled indexing of PDF's. If you select the "child" PDF node under your library entry, do you see "Indexed: Yes"? The settings are accessible from Gears>Preferences>Search>.
"- If I have a document containing formatted references (as fields, not known what software was used to manage them) and a References list, can I create a Zotero library from those references?"
I'm not really sure how to approach this. In fact, I may not even properly understand what you intend, so apologies if I've got it wrong.
You could try saving as RTF and using Gears>RTF Scan, but the degree of success would depend on the format of software that set up the references. You might do better after some Find & Replace. Another possibility is that you could save them to RIS or BIB (e.g. via Endnote). I've also used a tool called "ORPAL" (found on sourceforge.net) which has a (limited, but useful) ability to parse plain-text references into its database. From there you can save them as RIS and import into Zotero.
"- One feature I always thought would be great (which EndNote, needless to say, did not have) is the ability to identify all in-text citations corresponding to a given reference. Is this possible in Zotero?
- If I've managed citations in a document with Zotero, how can I find out in which file/library those citations are located?
- Conversely, given a user-defined Zotero library, how can one know what documents use references from that library?"
These last (first) three seem to me to be impossible at present in Zotero, and actually beyond the scope of the architecture of the application. I think they all presume a much greater degree of integration between word-processor and bibliography-management than exists - or is desired to exist.
That said, it seems you could implement the first in Word or OO, but it wouldn't be anything to do with Zotero.
For the second, generally there's only one library (per user), but there might be multiple collections. You can identify which collections a library-entry belongs to (can be more than one) by doing CTRL-select of the entry . This will highlight the names of the collections to which that entry belongs.
As for the third, I don't think there's any sort of link maintained that would enable such a query.
But I suspect also that these last three questions come from your cognitive model of how Endnote works, and that you'll find they don't arise in the same way (or at all) when using Zotero
You are right, I did have expectations of Zotero determined by my use of EndNote. But I have a better understanding of Zotero now, and have decided I'm sticking with it - and NOT going back to EndNote! >:-) Viva La Revolución!
http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/importing_formatted_bibliographies
And RTF Scan is documented here
http://www.zotero.org/support/rtf_scan