Reliably Data syncing links to files

PMK89
Dear all,
I started using Zotero some month ago to manage my sources while writing on my final project in computational theoretical chemistry. I work with three computers where all my working directories (with the according literature) are synchronized and the home paths are identical. First I set it up with standard preferences, quickly running into problems with the file syncing that I don't need anyway. So I changed the preferences according to this page https://www.zotero.org/support/sync
also tried disabling the "Automatically attach associated PDFs ...", setting and set the "Linked Attachement Base Directory" (even if identical on all computers). The worst part is not only the message that the file can't be found but that while the source still is named "10.1103@PhysRevB.50.17953.pdf" in Zotero it's shown nicely with author and date ".pdf". So I can't pick the file manually from the folder rendering Zotero completely useless on other computers then where I added the file. I even tried "Rename linked files", cause the synchronization would do it on the other devices to find at least my sources again, but without success. I think it's a quite simple problem but I now already spend some hours reading up solutions and deleting, reloading and dublicate cleaning my library and would like to know an definitive way how to get Zotero to work reliably with the synced sources.
Thanks and best regards
Patrick
  • dstillman
    edited April 19, 2019
    I'm not really following this.

    Is your entire home directory synchronized, including the Zotero data directory, or just a directory of PDFs? (The Zotero data directory shouldn't be in a cloud-synced folder.)

    Are you actually using linked files (e.g., with ZotFile), or are you still using stored files?

    The simplest way to use Zotero syncing is with the default settings, with stored files and Zotero file syncing. Generally speaking, it just works.

    If you don't want to do that for whatever reason, it's fairly easy to use a linked-file workflow using ZotFile, the Linked Attachment Base Directory setting, and an external cloud storage folder, and many people do so, but it's more complicated and error-prone.
  • dstillman
    (And turning off "Automatically attach associated PDFs" wouldn't have anything to do with this. That would just prevent Zotero from saving PDFs when you save items from the browser.)
  • PMK89
    Some folders in my home directory are synchronized. I want to used linked files cause they already get synchronized, but maybe I am doing that wrong

    The Problem is the size limit of the file storage, cause I save sometimes more than 20 papers a day and have a big library of university books and standard papers. Cause I already have synchronization with back-up set up and am a student I don't want to pay for a service I don't need. I just want Zotero to be able to open the files that are on the same locations on my devices.

    Also I don't want a duplicate within the Zotero directory cause with the textbooks it's already multiple GB.
  • adamsmith
    If you have links to the same files at the exact same filepath on all computers, Zotero will absolutely sync the link and open the file at that location, so I doubt that's the case.

    You'll have to walk us through exactly how you have set this up (both how you're linking files and how you're syncing the linked directories) in order to be able to help.
  • PMK89
    I think my problem is the linking of the files. But here is how I set it up:
    On all computers the home directory is /home/pmk/ with synchronized folders like "university" "paw" "textbooks" etc. that contain the PDFs sorted by project or topic, there also is the Zotero folder that is not synchronized.
    To get new literature I go to the webpage of my university library or a search engine and search the papers I am looking for, download them, put them in the folder of the project/topic they belong and import the file by drag-and-drop to the Zotero app. That reads the meta data so I can easily find them later and can copy the necessary information with betterBibTex to a .bib file to use with LaTeX.
  • adamsmith
    Drag&drop doesn't link to files, it stores them in Zotero. If you want to link to files. See https://www.zotero.org/support/attaching_files#file_copies_and_links for the difference and
    https://www.zotero.org/support/attaching_files#adding_files_via_the_zotero_window for how to add links to files.
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