FWIW current Firefox version is 26.0 and all of the links you posted work with official Zotero (MLZ is a fork of Zotero maintained by Frank Bennett).

Try updating your translators via Preferences -> General -> Update Now. If that doesn't work, provide a Report ID for the last Amazon link. http://www.zotero.org/support/reporting_bugs

Also, go through the steps here: http://www.zotero.org/support/troubleshooting_translator_issues

[JavaScript Error: "ZU.xpath(...)[0] is undefined" {file: "/Users/Blaine1/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/1c446gf0.default/zotero/translators/Amazon.com.js" line: 155}]

Frank will have to take a look at that. That error doesn't match up with the current Amazon translator, so I guess there's a special one for MLZ.

Is this the process for batch converting old PDFs to entries:
1. Drag to middle pane
2. Ask Zotero to Index them
3. Send in batches via right-click to retrieve info
4. When GS tells you "quota reached try later" wait for another day

Currently, yes, for the most part.

(3) doesn't have to be done in batches... you can do all at the same time, but batches are ok too.

(4) if you're using MLZ, which means you're also using Firefox, you can navigate to http://scholar.google.com and fill out the captcha that it will display. Once that is done, you should be able to retrieve more metadata. Then rinse and repeat.

After I've created a bibliographic record, I no longer think I need most of the pdfs "inside" my zotero library (neither "my library" nor in the zotero directory in those randomly named folders within storage).

Are you trying to say that you do not need the PDFs at all on your computer, or do you just want to keep them in the location that you had them originally in?

Well, you should certainly be able to delete the PDFs without deleting the Zotero Item associated with them. If you select just the PDF and press delete or right-click and choose Move to Trash, does that not work?

It just puzzles me why you would want to dissociate the PDFs, since Zotero makes is so convenient to find them. Depending on the PDF structure you are accustomed to (and want to keep), you may want to take a look at ZotFile, which allows you to automatically move PDFs to a folder hierarchy based on their metadata. This will also convert the PDFs in Zotero to file links.

Even without converting the PDFs to links, you can disable file syncing (while maintaining metadata syncing) in Zotero Preferences.

P.S.

Glad to hear about the captcha - the timing out was a drag.

There may be some considerable improvements coming for this feature in the near future. Might take a bit more time for it to reach MLZ though.

Hi everyone,

I hadn't realized there was a "grayed out" contextualization feature; I just tried it and that's of course what was happening. I see now that I never would have thought that context would be needed, because I have been practicing this disciplined PDF naming practice so (almost) all my files are in AUTHOR YEAR SHORT TITLE format. Of course that is the most convenient of all - but required that extra bit of effort that made it easy to fall behind, given my work habits!

That's exactly why I had thought I should disassociate my files from Zotero - rather than "hide" my well-named files in randomly named folders, and be obliged to access them by calling up Zotero, I would have preferred to keep them where they are in one big directory that I can scroll through in Windows Explorer (or, these days, Finder). (Moreover, having "two" copies made me anxious about space; if I had to choose I was sure I wanted my old one, especially since I also erroneously thought that if I kept the PDFs in the Zotero folders they'd all be backed up on your server ... I found the option you mentioned and see how to prevent that, thanks.)

So the recommendation to give Zotfile a look was on-target advice. I've installed it and did my first download, and it was very satisfying!

With that power, I'm now happier to let Zotero do its work - and rather than just "look" in a big "drawer" of PDFs to find the actual PDF, I will use the search menu to find by file name if I ever should feel like not using Zotero.

I somehow cannot get a "captcha" window to appear (does it come like a pop-up?), and logging in with my google account doesn't prevent google scholar from becoming irritated with me, so I am proceeding in batches through those files for now, while waiting for MLZ to get the improvements you're making to the "mother ship".

In the meantime my next phase is scanning paper copies of book chapters and the like (stuff that I can't just go "re-get" from an academic db) and then associating them with my already existing bibliographic records.

"Last but not least!" (for now) -- it seems that some (not all) of my ProCite records came in with this occasional error: the editor of the edited volume appears a co-author of a given chapter when that is not true. For now I don't mind just tidying them up on my own -- it's giving me the opportunity to find and address some other "sins" I made when I was first starting out -- but I thought I'd mention it in case anyone else importing from ProCite had a similar issue and you wanted some more test data.

Sorry to have been such a pain, but as you've been showing me the ropes I am growing ever more pleased with your creation. All you need and nothing you don't.

Best -

Very thoughtful of you, but I can spare you the trouble if the one you are thinking of is the one for the woman in Pittsburgh with the big data set, I found that and imported it but then when I saw one in the MLZ that was RIS-ProCite I took a quick comparative look and aside from the memos the heart of the code (okay, the first page of it) was basically the same. "To the untrained eye ..." Ironically I am also in Pittsburgh ... had some of the cites she did ... very strange coincidence ...

The one that was in my MLZ translators already is RIS-ProCite, whereas her procedure was to modify the RIS.js per one you had floating out there somewhere.

Here's how the RIS-ProCite starts, for a flashback ...


"translatorID": "298fd9e6-bd24-413e-8a47-991621ad5f76",
"label": "RIS-ProCite",
"creator": "Simon Kornblith and Aurimas Vinckevicius",
"target": "ris",
"minVersion": "2.1.3",
"maxVersion": "",
"priority": 90,
"inRepository": true,
"translatorType": 1,
"browserSupport": "gcs",
"lastUpdated": "2012-04-24 15:51:20"

Oh. In that case, if something didn't import correctly, feel free to post the RIS entry so we can fix it (if possible).

open the RIS file you exported from ProCite with a text editor (like notepad or text edit). Each entry goes from TY - to ER - Find one or two that didn't import correctly and copy and paste it here.