How can I manage storage: select what to sync and what to delete from storage?

leenhashem
Hello everyone,

I have a 2GB storage. I want to select certain collections from my library to sync, and not all of my library, is that possible?
Also, I want to delete certain items/collections from my storage to free up space, how can I do that?

Many thanks,
Leen
  • adamsmith
    You can't selectively sync, sorry.

    The only way to save items locally but not sync them is to store them as links rather than attachments.
  • sdspieg
    Is there a good reason for this? Is it technically difficult? Because I also run into this problem constantly.
  • adamsmith
    It's impossible given the current sync architecture. It will be technically possible once API-based syncing is rolled out, though I can't say what Zotero's plans are for allowing users to selectively include/exclude items or collections (Personally I think it makes sense, and I imagine they'll do something along those line, but there are some GUI/usability issues that are at least non-trivial).

    Dan has said that it _will_ be possible to only sync groups, not your personal library.
  • sdspieg
    Glad to see that your remain as agile and helpful as always :). Thanks! Of course we'd all like sthg like the selective sync of Dropbox (or other likewise sync services). But ok then. And there is no workaround either? E.g. would it be possible to save collections in separate folders in your Dropbox folder , and then only 'load' those that are in folders that have been selected with selective sync on THAT PC/Mac (which would then all also keep syncing with the 'master' library - both through Zotero AND through dropbox)?
  • dstillman
    For selective sync, note that Dropbox is dealing with folders, not collections. Since items in Zotero can exist in multiple collections in addition to the library root, simply unchecking a collection wouldn't really do anything, since the items would still exist elsewhere in your library.

    But we'd generally like to make it much easier to share items at a more granular level, and that will be possible in Zotero 5.0 and beyond.
  • adamsmith
    I mean -- if you use Dropbox for file syncing anyway, you already have files as links and can use Dropbox's selective file sync. Since you'd then also likely use ZotFile for folder structure, that should work nicely.

    But at the database level, there is no such thing as saving a collection to Dropbox: Zotero just has a single database file (which, as you'll remember, should very much not be in Dropbox).
  • sdspieg
    Dan - thanks. And that sounds encouraging (I will resist the terrible urge to inquire about the timeline for all of this). But please note that for many of us this is less an issue of granular 'sharing', as it is simply one of storage management on our machines. My Zotero library is 10 gig (I use papermachines quite heavily - because it helps us with BOTH textmining of large corpora (sometimes even just massive government websites that we have crawled and then import into Zotero) AND with our footnotes). That's fine on my desktop with a few tb. But on my notebook with a HD of only 256 Gig, that's a HUGE amount of space. So this is my main reason to be able to 'manage' what gets synced to what computer. And I just thought that there might be ways to leverage the dropbox selective sync to achieve this. I'm not a tech person, but I was thinking sthg along the line of Zotero (which obviously knows in which folder an item is saved communicating with Dropbox, so that Zotero would scan the (selectively synced) Dropbox 'Zotero' folder, would make a list with all the items that are in the these folders, and would then retrieve ONLY those items from the Zotero server. So if there were items that exist in multiple selections (as you suggest), it would then only retrieve the ones from the collections that would have been 'flagged' in the initial scan. But again - I'm probably overseeing sthg here.


    And Sebastian - I'll look into both Zotfile AND why dropbox is a nono (I remember reading about it, but I don't remember the details).
  • DWL-SDCA
    Dropbox is OK for attached or linked _files_ but not for the Zotero database itself. If the files are linked -- not in your Zotero directory -- you may have less issues with storage.
  • dstillman
    But please note that for many of us this is less an issue of granular 'sharing', as it is simply one of storage management on our machines.
    OK, noted.

    But just to be clear, items themselves hardly take up any space, so it sounds like your issue is just about attached files. Remote storage space is one thing, but if you're concerned about local space, you know you can use download-as-needed mode for file syncing? Then Zotero will only download files when you try to open them. You can even then do Show File and delete the downloaded file until you need it again, though that's obviously something we'd like to make more automatic.

    (You can technically even add an attachment locally, sync, and then delete the local file, but I wouldn't recommend that at the moment, since if the file doesn't upload for some reason you'd be deleting the original file. But we might be able to provide more visibility into what's actually on the server in a future version. You can of course make sure the file is accessible online and then delete locally. Again, though, we should be able to make this more automatic in the future.)
  • sdspieg
    Thanks Dan. Yes, it was about local space and hat selective sync could do for that. But so I was unaware of that option and will check it out. I'll search here on the formum for what the best pathway is for me to get from where I am now to where I'd like to be. But thanks again!
  • fallsaver
    I have a similar question, I think. I just unintentionally maxed out my free Zotero storage allotment. I have a large hard drive and I am already paying for a DropBox account, and it seems redundant to pay for more Zotero storage that I don't need if I can pull the largest attachments off of my Zotero account and put them on my hard drive instead. Unfortunately, I cannot find a list anywhere of what files I have on Zotero so I can selectively move them off Zotero and onto my hard drive. (I understand your reason for not doing that on DropBox, thank you for that.) How do I selectively move files off my Zotero account and onto my hard drive, please?
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