Upgrade Storageoffice mac dropbox home mac?
hello there,
i'm searching the web and this site all day long for a solution to use one shared zotero library, preferably via dropbox because i'm already paying for that, with two computers: one at the office the other at home.
i come from papers 3 which is, to put it mildly, not good but it spoilt me with the convenience to add one paper at the office, read it at home, add there another and read that the other day at the office and to have the local dropbox folder with which i could use os x's spotlight.
is this (office mac <-> local dropbox folder <-> home mac) possible with zotero and dropbox while using zotfile to have a nice folder structure and have pdf files which are added via drag and drop automatically renamed and moved to subfolders?
furthermore: is an automatization even possible with zotfile? i only managed to batch select files and rename/move them.
let's assume all the above could work, here's one thing where papers spoilt me, too: after a clean install of os x and reinstallation of papers of a new installation on a new mac i just had to tell papers where the old dropbox library was and back were all the library entries within papers including all pdf files. how would this be done with zotero in case i had to reinstall it or if i wanted to use the same dropbox folder on a third computer?
any help is greatly appreciated.
thank you in advance.
i'm searching the web and this site all day long for a solution to use one shared zotero library, preferably via dropbox because i'm already paying for that, with two computers: one at the office the other at home.
i come from papers 3 which is, to put it mildly, not good but it spoilt me with the convenience to add one paper at the office, read it at home, add there another and read that the other day at the office and to have the local dropbox folder with which i could use os x's spotlight.
is this (office mac <-> local dropbox folder <-> home mac) possible with zotero and dropbox while using zotfile to have a nice folder structure and have pdf files which are added via drag and drop automatically renamed and moved to subfolders?
furthermore: is an automatization even possible with zotfile? i only managed to batch select files and rename/move them.
let's assume all the above could work, here's one thing where papers spoilt me, too: after a clean install of os x and reinstallation of papers of a new installation on a new mac i just had to tell papers where the old dropbox library was and back were all the library entries within papers including all pdf files. how would this be done with zotero in case i had to reinstall it or if i wanted to use the same dropbox folder on a third computer?
any help is greatly appreciated.
thank you in advance.
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See https://www.zotero.org/support/sync for the distinction between file sync and data sync.
You can use ZotFile to automatically move all new files to the selected folder & folder structure (it does do that automatically for all new files, but may not if you import a database from papers, so you may have to do this in batch once) and use Dropbox to sync those files across devices. You may also need to set up a base directory for relative links (in the advanced tab of the preferences) in Zotero to make this work across machines.
This forum post:
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/29322/howto-linked-attachments-dropbox-zotero-40/
and this blogpost:
http://geekandgirliestuff.blogspot.com/2014/10/new-computer-fresh-zotero-install.html
have in-depth descriptions of what/how to set up.
With that done, you should have all you need and won't be missing Papers.
so the base directory is necessary if i want to use the same database with the same pdfs across two zotero-computers? i don't quite get what would be shared (pdfs only) and what would be set up in both instances of zotero (database?). i thought the idea of using zotero1 at the office computer and using zotero2 at the home computer was that they both use the same database, right?
e.g. /Users/OfficeComputer/Dropbox/somepdf.pdf vs
/Users/Laptop/Dropbox//somepdf.pdf
The base directory lets Zotero know about those differences so that file links work across computers (even between different operating systems as needed).
I'm not sure I understand the rest of the question, in particular the difference between "shared" and "set up in both instances": Zotero databases (and attached files) are always local. So just like Dropbox syncs the files so that a copy of the same file is a) on computer 1 b) online at dropbox.com c) on computer 2; Zotero syncs the database so that a copy of it is a) on computer 1, b)online at zotero.org, c) on computer 2.