Migration from Firefox to Standalone

dentino
I recently switched from Zotero for FF to Zotero Standalone (v. 4.0.29.17) under Windows 7. I left my data in the FF profile and Zotero Standalone offered the option to use this data folder. I would like to move the data now to the Zotero profile. This is because I want to do a clean install of FF and I am afraid of losing Zotero data.

My Zotero profile includes the following folders:
crashes\
extensions\
gmp\
webapps\

My FF Zotero folder includes these folders:
better-bibtex\
locate\
storage\
styles\
translators\

So how to best handle the move? Do I create a new "data" folder in the Zotero profile and put all of original folders from the FF profile in there? Or should I simply add the better-bibtex\ locate\ storage\ styles\ translators\ folders to the Zotero profile folders?

And then change the data directory location in settings.

Advise on the safest way to handle this would be appreciated.

Thank you.
  • adamsmith
    Here are the steps -- please read closely and follow precisely. (It's pretty hard to actually lose anything in the process, but let's not try ;)
    Also note that you won't need the Zotero profile you found.

    This doesn't actually take more than 5mins, don't let the number of steps scare you:

    1. Find your Zotero data folder in Firefox -- that's what you have above as the "FF Zotero folder" -- it's the folder named "zotero" containing all those subdirectories as well as your actual database, zotero.sqlite.
    2. Quit Firefox
    3. Copy the Zotero data directory to a different location on your harddisk (e.g. the Desktop)
    4. Open Zotero Standalone.
    5. In the preferences, under Advanced --> Files and Folders, set the data directory location to default
    6. Restart Zotero Standalone. You should see an empty data base with only the "welcome to Zotero message".
    7. Using "Show data folder" under Advanced --> Files and Folders, show the Zotero Standalone data folder -- it will have similar, though subdirectories as above, though likely not all.
    8. Leave the data directory open; quite Zotero Standalone.
    9. Now comes the actual migration: replace the folder from step 7/8 with the copied folder from step 3. Several ways to do this. You can, e.g., just delete the Standalone data folder and then move the one you copied from Firefox to its location.
    10. Restart Standalone. You should now, again, see your library.
    11. Under Advanced --> Files and Folders, verify that the data directory is set to default and that, on show data folder, the folder opens in the new location, not in Firefox.
  • dentino
    Thank you Adam.

    This worked well. I had a few small difficulties along the way due to my ignorance. I wasn't sure exactly at what level to put the data. I put them under the 1xgbi65d.default directory, not realizing that the next zotero was critical. So when I opened up Zotero standalone there were no data. At this time I realized that I had to include the data within another zotero directory, and all worked well this time. This is my data directory, now:

    C:\Users\David\AppData\Roaming\Zotero\Zotero\Profiles\1xgbi65d.default\zotero

    As a result of all this I have this in the upper level:

    crashes\
    extensions\
    gmp\
    webapps\
    zotero\

    And this within the final (lower level) zotero directory:

    better-bibtex\
    crashes\
    gmp\
    locate\
    storage\
    styles\
    translators\
    webapps\

    To clean up, I assume that I can delete the following within this last directory:
    better-bibtex\
    crashes\
    gmp\
    webapps\

    Could you please confirm that I can remove these directories which now seem to be controlled in the level above? It looks as if better-bibtex and the other extensions are in the extensions directory.

    Thank you again for your help!


  • adamsmith
    don't delete better-bibtex. I believe it stores some data there (it was in your Zotero for Firefox data directory too). The others are good to delete.
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