Some items not imported from Paperpile

dstillman Zotero Team
This discussion was created from comments split from: Fastest way to add folders of PDFs?.
  • mebiel
    hmmm, I placed the RIS file inside my Paperpile folder but Zotero only imported about 4,000 of my 8,000 references. I'm on a free Zotero account kicking the tires to see if I want to switch over to Zotero. I wonder if that played any role in the incomplete import. Can't see changing if I have to manually transfer 4,000 items...
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    @mebiel: Storage subscriptions are just for syncing files to your online library and other devices — no connection to this. Local usage of Zotero is completely free and unlimited.

    You'd want to check to see whether there are actually 8000 records in the RIS file. You should be able to do that with a text editor (TextEdit, Notepad) by searching for TI - and looking at the number of results.
  • mebiel
    @dstillman Thanks for the tip on using the search function to count the number of entries. I have over 8,000 based on my search. So it does look like Zotero imported about half.

    I looked at the error console and there are many messages but they appear to just be related to having gone over an upload quota
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    Did it actually say that it finished importing, or did Zotero crash?

    If you sort by Date Added and compare the items to the RIS file, can you tell if it stopped at a certain point?
  • mebiel
    I wasn't sure whether Zotero crashed or not so I uninstalled it and reinstalled. I have the same number of successfully imported items in Zotero but now the Error Console messages are different. They are of the form:

    [JavaScript Warning: "Storing invalid field 'publisher' for type journalArticle in Extra for item 1/null"]

    [JavaScript Warning: "Storing invalid field 'place' for type journalArticle in Extra for item 1/null"]

    and the final one was:

    [JavaScript Error: "malformed URI sequence" {file: "chrome://zotero/content/xpcom/translation/translate_firefox.js line 425 > eval" line: 1371}]

    Zotero did not crash. The message I got at the end of the import attempt was:

    "Error

    An error occurred while trying to import the selected file. Please ensure that the file is valid and and try again."

    The last 3 papers imported the second time match the last 3 imported the first time.

    Thanks

  • dstillman Zotero Team
    OK, so make a copy of that RIS file, open the copy in a text editor, and search for the last imported item you see in Zotero, looking at the entries before and after to make sure you have the right one. The next record in the file should be the one it's failing on — it should have something weird related to a URL, based on the error message. If you can either post that record here or send it to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread, we can take a look.

    You should then be able to delete that bad record and all the records above it to the beginning of the file, save the file, and then import the new smaller file to continue importing from that spot.

    (Once you've imported everything, you'll want to sort by Date Added and delete any batches of duplicates from repeated import attempts, and then empty the trash.)
  • mebiel
    edited February 7, 2021
    @dstillman Thanks very much for your help. I was able to import all 8000+ articles by editing the .RIS file. Since there was more than one apparent error in the RIS file exported out of Paperpile, I had to edit it a couple of times and continue to import. No big deal...
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    It'd still be helpful if you could send us an example record that was broken so that we could fix the error.
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