export one folder from Zotero e.g. to usb or just to desktop

Dagmar2013 · June 18, 2014

Hello,

how can I export just one folder from my Zotero-Library e.g. to usb-stick or simple to my desktop?
I tried it this way: right mouseklick - Zotero RDF - save on the desktop.
But when I opened the folder there was just a big chaos in the files and nothing that I was able to read.

adamsmith · June 18, 2014

so you don't want this export for another Zotero user (because they could just reimport the RDF) - you just want to export the attachments?

jthiel1 · June 27, 2014

Yes - I would like to know how to do the same thing. Just export attachments so that I can deliver to a non-zotero user.

adamsmith · June 28, 2014

you can drag individual files out of Zotero to your file system (note that you can't in most cases, drag them right to your e-mail).
You can select multiple files by holding down ctrl while selecting (different key on Mac--option or Cmd?), but note you have to make sure to just select the attachments, no the top-level item.

For a larger collection, there is no great way to do this. The best workaround I can think of would be, if you're going to do this a lot, tag all PDFs (do a saved search for Attachment Content --is--PDF and then select all and drag to a tag or assign a numerical/colored tag after select all). Then you can go to any selection, filter by that tag, and select all will only select the PDF attachments, which you can then drag to your file system as per above.

Unfortunately, none of the above works with linux, where file drag&drop to the file manager is broken. There, doing this by collection is a big mess, though you can set up a virtual folder with all PDFs and select them there - shouldn't be that hard to find since Zotero auto-renames files on import.