Import PDFs from Multiple Folders, and Keep PDFs organized by Folder

thetrio84

Hi there,

I'm switching to Zotero from Mendeley for a variety of reasons. Right now all of my PDFs are organized in folders named Author/Year_Journal/*.pdf . I have > 10,000 PDFs stored in this way on my computer. Is there any way for me to add of all of these PDFs to my Zotero library?

Additionally, once those PDFs are in the Zotero library, and for any new PDFs I download/import/read in Zotero, I would like to retain that folder structure. Is there any way to specify how PDFs are stored locally?

I do not have an online Mendeley account, nor would I like to store my Zotero library in the cloud, as I frequently need to access the papers without internet access.

Thanks,

Alex

dstillman

First, to be clear, needing to access your papers without internet access doesn't really have anything to do with whether or not you store your Zotero library in the cloud. Zotero stores all data and files locally by default. You can optionally set up syncing between devices, but you would always have access to everything locally.

There's a third-party plugin that can import files in an existing folder hierarchy and preserve collections in Zotero. (We'll be integrating similar functionality into Zotero soon.)

If you want to use linked files, you can use the ZotFile plugin to set up moving of new files back to the same folder structure. You would still always save items and files to Zotero, and it would do the moving for you as necessary.