Local PDF annotations not syncing to online Zotero file storage

jessestryker
I'm using Zotero file storage for my research literature library. I'm unable to get local edits to the PDF files (annotations) to sync to my online storage.

I'm using Zotero 5.0.54 on Arch linux. I have a non-default data directory location (if that's relevant). And I open and annotate the PDF files using Okular Version 1.4.3.

The problem presents itself like this:

I open an article PDF in Okular by double-clicking some entry in my library. I add some annotations, and then save and close the PDF. Zotero apparently never recognizes that the source file has been changed because the "Date Modified" doesn't get updated. However, if I check the timestamp of the source file in a terminal (using "ls -l") I can see that the timestamp was updated when I made the annotations.

How do I get Zotero to detect that local PDFs have been modified?


Any help would be greatly appreciated.
  • adamsmith
    You're positive those annotations write to the PDF directly? I recall that Okular used to keep annotations separately & you had to run some special function to save them as regular PDF annotations.
  • jessestryker
    As far as I can tell, they are. The changed timestamp suggested the PDF itself is being modified. Also, I just sent a copy of the local file to myself with Gmail and the Gmail preview of the PDF has annotations.
  • jessestryker
    Ok, the syncing may be working now. I'm not sure what made things work (it is possible I wasn't waiting long enough for all the changes to propagate) but now I can download files from online that have my annotations.

    One thing I did since making my post was I asked Zotero to retrieve metadata for an arbitarily chosen PDF (that hadn't have annotations). This might have triggered a sync differently than when I just click the sync button. Following this metadata retrieval, I was requested to resolve a file conflict involving an annotated file and its unedited online version.
  • jessestryker
    side note: The "Date Modified" in Zotero doesn't get modified even when the local PDF file changes get synced (which is sensible).
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