Upgrade StorageAttributing PDFs to existing database entries
Hello,
My team uses a Zotero Group to share some bibliographical elements.
The files are not synchronized on the group, only the entries.
When retrieving the content of the shared group, all the entries have an attachment but no corresponding file (empty/hollow blue dot) which is normal since files are not synchronized.
However, I have all these missing PDFs on my own computer but I cannot figure out how a convenient way to attach them to the entries.
The only way I found is to drag a pdf to its corresponding entry, which creates an entry with two attachments, the first (pointing to a "file not found") and the new one. For the whole database, this process is very long and I suspect there must be a quicker way.
(And even this way, I either keep my two attachments or merge them, but I'm afraid this might cause issues with others users of the Group when synchronized).
My team uses a Zotero Group to share some bibliographical elements.
The files are not synchronized on the group, only the entries.
When retrieving the content of the shared group, all the entries have an attachment but no corresponding file (empty/hollow blue dot) which is normal since files are not synchronized.
However, I have all these missing PDFs on my own computer but I cannot figure out how a convenient way to attach them to the entries.
The only way I found is to drag a pdf to its corresponding entry, which creates an entry with two attachments, the first (pointing to a "file not found") and the new one. For the whole database, this process is very long and I suspect there must be a quicker way.
(And even this way, I either keep my two attachments or merge them, but I'm afraid this might cause issues with others users of the Group when synchronized).
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If the local library on the computer where the files were added was deleted without uploading files, there's no option other than manually relocating each attachment. (If you click Locate in the File Not Found dialog for a stored-file attachment, Zotero will automatically copy the file to the appropriate place in its data directory.)
If understand correctly, there is no other option to associate a file to an entry than manually one by one, I see.
Usually, the files are not present, but the entries have "empty" attachments that all point towards inexistent files, is there a way to tell Zotero to look for all these missing attachments in a specific folder?
And thank you very much for your answer!
That's just not really how Zotero is meant to be used, so it has no mechanism for automatically copying matching files from an external directory back into the data directory. It would technically be possible to do it based on the file contents, as long as the files exactly matched the originals, but it's not a normal workflow — when you add stored files to Zotero, you would normally delete the originals so as to not have multiple copies on your disk. And if you weren't going to sync files in a group library, you would normally just disable file editing for the library (and therefore the creation of file attachments) rather than have broken attachments in everyone's library. So there's just not really an expected workflow where this comes up.
Zotero will likely gain linked-file support in groups at some point, which would be a way to avoid syncing files while keeping them accessible in the library. For now, if you're not going to use file syncing, I would just keep them in the external directory and search for them in that folder as needed.
I understand that this workflow is not very much how Zotero is designed to work, however, as you suggest, disabling file editing completely for the library would actually be an improvement by getting rid of broken file attachments that we all have!
Indeed, linked-file support in groups would definitely be useful as well (for this case maybe, for others I have definitely), for now, we'll find a way, thanks for your feedback.