Zotero setup with Google Drive

mtonkins
Hello all,

I hope this is not a stupid question! I have recently moved across to Zotero from Mendeley. I have all of my research papers on my Google Drive in a specific folder. I use the Google Drive client, so for all intended purposes, its just another folder on my computer.

I have set the Data Directory to point to this folder. However, even with the papers in the folder, they do not get added? I can of course drag them into Zotero, but then I need to run the meta-data extraction tool. This works fine. Also, when I use my University computer, which also has Zotero and google drive installed, I have go through the process again. Surely the metadata etc would be there from running the operation on my other computer.

My question is, why does Zotero not pick up the PDF's and extracted meta-data once I point the data directory in that direction? Clearly I am doing something wrong, but I can't figure out what!

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

MT
  • bwiernik
    Install the Zotfile plugin in Zotero and then use its features to store your PDFs in Google Drive (http://zotfile.com)
  • adamsmith
    there are a bunch of misunderstandings here on how Zotero works:
    1) You should never point your data folder to a synced folder (Dropbox, Google drive, etc.). You'll want to revert that or risk corrupting your database (it also won't do what you want).
    2) Zotero will never just "recognize" files in any folder. You have to actively drag them to Zotero and (currently, that may change) select the retrieve-metadata function.
    3) If you have been using Mendeley before -- why would you _want_ to refetch all the metadata (which will cause a bunch of other hiccups when done in large batches)? Presumably it's already in Mendeley? Why not export it from there and import?

    There are essentially two ways to go:
    a) you can just drag all file to Zotero and let Zotero and Zotero sync/file storage take care of sync between computers: https://www.zotero.org/support/sync
    b) you can link to the files on Google drive -- you can do that manually or using zotfile as bwiernik suggests, use Google drive to sync the files and use Zotero to sync the data.
  • Gurdas_Sandhu
    @bwiernik and @adamsmith , if the OP only transfers metadata from Mendeley to Zotero, then, Zotfile is of no use, right? So, the correct procedure would be to:

    1. Use an export format that allows metadata AND attached files to be transferred to Zotero. In this case the attached files will go in to the default Zotero storage location on local drive (such as Firefox profile folder). So, which export format is best?

    2. Then, use Zotfile to transfer the attached files from Zotero storage folder to the Google Drive folder. Does that mean Zotfile will change the file linking from "Stored Copy of File" to "Link to File"?
  • mtekman
    edited March 27, 2017
    Hi guys, I've somewhat automated the process of linking Google Drive files to Zotero Group items by generating static links that do not require any clientside configuration

    Hope this helps:
    https://bitbucket.org/mtekman/zoterogoogledrive_pdflinker/
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