Upgrade StorageTransferring attachments from My Library to Group Library
I have a very large collection of citations that include pdf attachments. These are stored locally on my machine. Have created a group to share these publications with my colleagues, and they have successfully joined the group.
Small collections have already been successfully shared between us, but when I attempt to add my entire top-level "my collection" folder to the top level group folder, I lose the attachments.
Click and drag fails to bring over the PDFs. When I use Zotero export and select "include files", I can't seem to reimport to the group folder. The import command brings the whole collection back into my personal folder, creating duplicates.
The weirdest thing about this issue is that the attachments don't all fail to come over. I actually get some of them (like about %10-%15, seemingly at random). All other non-pdf attachments come over just fine. The notes, PubMed snapshots, etc are all there for all items, but for the PDFs its only a fraction. I am stumped.
For reference I am using Zotero Standalone on Mac with version 4.0.28.8 and I also use the add-ons "RTF/ODF scan" and "ZotFile". My library is stored on a local file (not Dropbox) and the group library has 6gb storage
Thanks!
-Adam, to follow up to your questions from the original thread: I cannot reliably drag and drop individual citations and keep the pdf attachments, even though the "keep attachments" option is checked in the Zotero preferences. Even though I am using Zotfile, the "show file" option does bring up the actual pdf in the Zotero local storage (not a symbolic link or something).
Small collections have already been successfully shared between us, but when I attempt to add my entire top-level "my collection" folder to the top level group folder, I lose the attachments.
Click and drag fails to bring over the PDFs. When I use Zotero export and select "include files", I can't seem to reimport to the group folder. The import command brings the whole collection back into my personal folder, creating duplicates.
The weirdest thing about this issue is that the attachments don't all fail to come over. I actually get some of them (like about %10-%15, seemingly at random). All other non-pdf attachments come over just fine. The notes, PubMed snapshots, etc are all there for all items, but for the PDFs its only a fraction. I am stumped.
For reference I am using Zotero Standalone on Mac with version 4.0.28.8 and I also use the add-ons "RTF/ODF scan" and "ZotFile". My library is stored on a local file (not Dropbox) and the group library has 6gb storage
Thanks!
-Adam, to follow up to your questions from the original thread: I cannot reliably drag and drop individual citations and keep the pdf attachments, even though the "keep attachments" option is checked in the Zotero preferences. Even though I am using Zotfile, the "show file" option does bring up the actual pdf in the Zotero local storage (not a symbolic link or something).
Note that notes and PubMed Links (those aren't snapshots) are in a different category--neither are "attachments" for the purpose of Zotero file sync. So let's focus on PDFs entirely for the time being.
Yes I can manually add a PDF to an item in the shared group. I created an item using the zotero plugin for chrome and then manually added a PDF using "add attachment -->attach a stored copy of a file". I also was able to add a PDF directly by using the Chrome plugin on a page that was hosting a PDF.
What I am not able to do is drag a PDF from My library over to the group library - this is the case when it is attached to an item, or just a bare PDF as a top-level item itself.
I agree, PDFs are the main focus here, since thats all that really matters in my use case.
https://www.zotero.org/support/debug_output
Make sure the item doesn't already exist in the group in any collection.
I created a new item in My library with a PDF. I enabled debugging and then drag+dropped to a folder in My Groups
The debug output ID is D827055336
For the few items that are dragged to the group library that PDFs follow, these PDFs are accessible by the "show file" and they are in the "zotero storage" folder, under cryptic folder names.
I did try to take Dan's suggestion about zotfile though - I went into the Zotfile preferences and saw that files were saved as symbolic links. I changed this and then "renamed" all the attachments using the zotfile menu. Then I went into the Zotero preferences and chose "revert to absolute paths" for file and attachment storage. Now, when I click "show file" from items in My library, it shows a PDF located in a Zotero storage folder, again with the weird cryptic file names. The icons are different as well - whereas before they had the "link" symbol, now they are red pdf icons.
So after rebuilding my local library and ensuring all the links are real and not symbolic, I deleted the entire group library and tried to create it by drag and drop from scratch.
Again the results were spotty. Out of a total 1038 items, 669 have pdf attachments. When I drag and drop to the group library, only 305 attachments persist.
Of note, items with PDF attachments in the group library can be dragged and dropped to my local library without fail even if these items are totally new (didn't previously exist in My local library)
Finally, there are a few items which have non-pdf attachments (such as ppt and xls) and these seem to have all come over, but I'm not sure if this is really meaningful since there are so few of them and I have about a 50% success rate with PDFs.
I will try and replicate what I had done earlier with the debug enabled and I will post an ID as soon as I can
You should also check if you can actually open those files. I'd have to test, but I think attachments that don't contain a local file would not transfer over (because it wouldn't help you at all if they did).
I tried to replicate the problem again with debugging on, but this time all 630 actual pdf attachments seem to have come over. the other 30 or so are - as you said - symbolic links. This is an issue I noticed a while ago with how Zotfile was handling renaming files when no metadata was present (it names them sequentially as "pdf, pdf1, etc). These aren't recognized as actual PDF files because they have no file extension. This was an issue I have been meaning to fix manually for a while. Which is all besides the point, because it seems that for all the verifiable pdf links I can see so far - they all worked by drag and drop.
no idea why this failed the first time and succeeded the second.
::shrug::
Thanks for all your help. I'll be sure to update if something else comes up. The Zotero team is the best!