Upgrade Storagehyperlinks back to zotero item
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As you say, it is local files which we need to target, not remote ones. My mistake (big stupid mistake).
1. Drag and drop seems alas precluded by OneNote not being fully integrated into Windows (really weird, huh?)
2. For some strange reason I'm not getting the link to the local Zotero file location to open, as I do the (very similar) link to the local DropBox file location. No idea why. When I look at them, they look like mirror images of each other, but one works and the other doesn't.
This link works:
C:\Users\M Montagu-Pollock\Dropbox\1 Ongoing work\2
Philippine book\Demographic Transition\Williamson -
Demographic Transitions and Economic Miracles in Emerging Asia.pdf
This doesn't:
C:\Users\M Montagu-Pollock\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\m6okxk3x.default-1342821502168\zotero\storage\9SPMR9QX
To work, this second one requires pasting into a browser, and then an interface opens, and then you click on the pdf and it opens.
3. I need time to get to grips with Adam's URI.
Thank you again for your help.
Maybe people seeking help should be required to select an 'IT competence level' box so that the support people could adjust accordingly. Maybe also support could get some informal suggestions in (to put it informally) "expanding your answers into longer but easier sentences, with relevant links, so that dummies can understand what you are saying".
A. One can hyperlink locally to files attached to a Zotero record without too much difficulty
B. They also open smoothly in a local application when the OneNote link is clicked.
Next step, to figure out how I can access my file collection from another PC (and from the OneNote, which is a cloud system, on that PC). After all, my laptop could get stolen or trashed, then I'd be in a mess.
Reviewing the dialogue with Adam, some of the things he says make a vague sense to me, with my limited knowledge. But others, and such of the documentation as I can discover that is relevant to my present quest, such as the "Add Files" documentation, is, to me, seen "through a glass, darkly..."
It does seem to me that there's a case for the Zotero team to create a quick guide to how to manage what must be an enormously common use-case:
1. User has more than one computer, and there is no LAN connecting them.
2. User wants to use Zotero as the main place to keep file references, and the main location to access and manage any links to his store of pdf files
3. User wants to be able to use cloud-based programs to hyperlink to his Zotero collection and pdf attachments, from any of his computers, and through them access his files.
4. User wants his pdf file collection (and the Zotero window to them) to exist not only locally (even with a backup in some other location) but to have 'redundancy of use' so that if one work-location fails or is trashed or is stolen, there's no workflow interruption.
The quick guide would simply explain "how to". Maybe there is such a guide. But if not, this is surely surprising. Maybe what I am suggesting can't be done but if so, again this is surely surprising. Nowadays we all largely live in the cloud and every program is expected to hyperlink to every other in the cloud, and at the same time give us much the same immediacy of user-experience as if things were all being done locally.
However maybe Zotero Storage can do this for me? And the linking functionality that we talked about will work?
(I appreciate that DropBox is 'streng verboten' but it seems that SugarSync doesn't work in quite the same way. In DropBox you place whatever folder you want synced in the DropBox folder, whereas SugarSync and many other synchonizers sync whatever local folder you choose.)
Don't know enough to know what the preferable setup is, and what the dangers are.
Is there some other documentation which provides the magic key?
Having done that in both computers, and with both data and file libraries located in c:\zotero, I should be ready to go, right?
But there is still a worry: when I look at Preferences | Advanced ! Files and Folders, it says: 'Data Directory Location:' and when I moved this to c:\zotero, maybe I did not move the location where the attachments are supposed to be. True, I copied the entire My Apps Zotero directory there, following what I maybe mistakenly thought were the instructions. But is that where the file directory is supposed to be?
Where file directories have been copied to (by me), and where they are supposed to be to get Zotero file syncing to work correctly, are maybe two different issues. If Zotero intended the file directories to be in the same place as the Data directores, it would surely not have labelled Preferences | Advanced ! Files and Folders 'Data Directory Location' but 'Data and File Directory Location'.
So (to return to the original question), how can I best set things up, in order to sync data storage between two computers?
If you experience any further issues, or have questions not directly related to the original topic, please start a new thread.
Not sure how to say this, but have you had a User Experience guy look at your documentation from the perspective of a new user? The point of UX guys is to say: 'Look, you experienced application designers/site designers/helpdesk people know all about how this works, but do you really understand that it may be confusing for beginners and exactly why and where they're confused?'
Your colleagues, I notice, are very comfortable when talking at quite a high level to users about possible features. Of course this is the interesting part of the job. Its at the lower level that there is a problem. It has taken me the best part of three days to figure out whether Zotero might sync between one computer and another and whether links to the files and folders it archives would work, and to check how. Of course I'll admit that I'm probably a very stupid guy, but I use lots and lots of programs, and the learning curve is rarely as hard as this. Figuring out whether a program will do what I want will usually take me about 15 minutes flat.
Returning to the your immediate comment. Yes, I have already seen 'sync page' and 'Zotero File Storage page' and 'Sync Preferences'. I can't agree that in them 'this is clearly explained' otherwise I wouldn't have spent the best part of eight hours worrying whether I'd got it all set up correctly, and puzzling very carefully and painstakingly over the exact wording of the help documentation! I pointed out one way in which the site seems misleading (labelling Preferences | Advanced ! Files and Folders 'Data Directory Location' when it would more helpfully be called 'Data and File Attachment Directory Location').
I feel you're all doing a great job, but a lot of questions you answer could more easily be explained at documentation stage, by longer and more detailed documentation. As to whether documentation has, or has not been satisfactorily done, that is not really a matter of opinion. It can be tested, by running some UX tests.
I'm just saying this because I really am trying to help, particularly trying to help Zotero deal with people who are, like me, new to the system.
I honestly do not know which part of this is not clear though.
I'm sure you realize that the outsider won't understand (a) that Zotero makes a distinction between 'data' and 'files'; (b) that the two may be stored in different places, and (c) if he does understand this, he is likely to be nervous about it, since it opens up the possibility that his files won't be properly backed up.
I could go on to explain at greater depth why Zotero's instructions seem to me not very clear, but it would be a waste of time, as there are no listening ears on the other side.
To implement some user experience testing, no need to actually hire a UX guy. Just read something like 'Don't make me think!' by Steve Krug. His 'Rocket Surgery Made Easy' is a good guide to fixing the sort of problems you are suffering from. But it does require an open-minded and flexible approach....
Setting up Zotero syncing literally requires entering your username and password and nothing else. Everything else is set to just work by default. The people you're lecturing here have helped many thousands of people over the years and have a pretty good sense of people's experiences using Zotero. Sorry you had trouble here, but your experience is not representative.
I thought it worth commenting because (a) I've started, funded, hired for, managed, designed, and brought to completion a large and successful web site, so I've had experience with usability issues, and (b) I'm a writer and editor of 25 years' experience.
So I know when a site or instructions aren't user-friendly! I also know that the last people who will accept having their copy made clearer, are the people who wrote it.
However if it works for most people, that's fine.