i'd also have kind of problems like that:

exporting from the windows desktop at work i got the written error message while importing on ubuntu 6.06 at home.

i figured out that in one case there's a problem that attached filenames are changed when unusual charcters like ä or something like that occur in the filenames. It was because of my linuxsystem didn't understood the character in the windowsgiven format, after changing it manually in the files-directory of the to be imported file on ubuntu it worked fine for that one.
BUT there are other files i couldn't tell the cause of the error. For that ones it also failed to reimport the exported files on the windows desktop itself. while searching within the rdf-file i figured out that some fields for authornames and stuff weren't exportet. But as i don't know the syntax of the used markup-language i don't know wether the error is related to this.

this one really sucks when one is trying to move huge amounts of entries. first to figure out what's missing or for what cases the error occured is painful and not to speek of reenter them manually.

I'm trying to export the library using Zotero RDF; all I get is an error message ("Alert: an error occurred while trying to export the selected file"). When I open the rdf file, all it has is the namespace declarations. There isn't anything in the error console. I tried to just export a sub-collection, and got the same problem.

If I can do anything else to track this down, let me know -- it's really holding up my work.

Has there been any resolution to this? I just downloaded the new version of Zotero and attempted to export my library to a shared drive and got the same error mentioned above when importing it to a new PC.

>>Trying to transfer libraries between my laptop (Ubuntu 6.06) and desktop (Mac 10.4.8). When I attempt to import the file My Library.rdf I get the following error:
An error occurred while trying to import the selected file. Please ensure that the file is valid and try again.<<

I have this problem trying to export my library to Zotero RDF, "An error occurred while trying to export the selected file." I even tried it without notes or files and still no dice. I need to export so I can import onto my new laptop. I really don't want to have to go and download all my pdfs again, make new snapshots, notes, etc. I have hundreds of records! Help!

We don't recommend using import/export to move your Zotero library to another computer—just make a copy of the Zotero data directory.

Does this work perfectly across platforms? I've done it, but I don't routinely do it & I haven't tried lately.

ransomca is going Linux->Mac.

grzes was going Mac->Windows & you advised him to just wait on the import longer (I mentioned the possibility of just moving the database file over, but with a disclaimer).

Does this work perfectly across platforms? I've done it, but I don't routinely do it & I haven't tried lately.

Sorry, I missed the cross-platform part.

SQLite databases should be completely cross-platform compatible. The only potential issue would be with attachments. Attachments stored within the Zotero data directory should work fine cross-platform, but linked files won't work, since absolute file locations are stored differently on different platforms. We'll be switching the paths to at least be human-readable in the database on all platforms (they're currently in a weird format on Macs), which would allow for manual batch editing with the SQLite command-line client when switching platforms. For people that have many linked files who don't want to convert the linked files to imported files and don't want to use the SQLite client, import/export probably is the best approach.

how are you exporting/importing exactly?