IOS beta no title and metadata, what I am doing wrong?

levire
I am a great fan of Zotero and I immediately started testing the IOS beta.
All the Library (without PDFs, of course) is accurately synchronized, over 22000 items, but I have an issue I cannot resolve.
If I add a paper on my iPad from Safari, in the local Library i find the PDF with a generic name such as item_FSGLGF.PDF, without a parent and metadatas.
On the macbooks I have only the empty file with the same name.

What am I doing wrong?
  • dstillman
    The iOS app doesn't currently perform metadata retrieval for PDFs. You just need to right-click on the PDF in your desktop Zotero and choose "Retrieve Metadata for PDF". See the linked page for your options if the PDF isn't recognized, which would be the same as when just using the desktop app.

    Note that, when possible, you should save from an article page rather than saving a PDF directly, and then you'll skip the metadata retrieval step.
  • cyavana
    Is this planned? I think many of us add PDFs from iOS and such would be much nicer.
  • bwiernik
    But again, you should save the item to Zotero from the article metadata/abstract page, not from the PDF page. That will give you full item data and generally much better data than would be possible with PDF retrieval.
  • cyavana
    One might at anytime decide to add article. While browsing through dozens, hundreds or more articles, from sending article link to another app, from abstract, opening PDF and then determining worth, etc., any of the above from web, from app (e.g., QXMD), from iMessage, from email attachment, from anywhere.

    Perhaps an added PDF auto-linked to some article w/blank metadata. Perhaps with selected text, search sources to match (like once before w/Papers). Perhaps more.

    Coming from Papers, it was not bad at minimizing steps of adding, matching, rating, adding to collection, etc., where from anywhere performing any other was possible with the highest ease and simplicity that is iOS. Having some set workflow and set steps, only one path, is perhaps not the Apple way others are accused to; understandably such is perhaps difficult and difficult labor –, yet such could someday set forth on summits Zotero’s reach and renowned.

  • dstillman
    PDF metadata retrieval will be added to the iOS app at some point — it just hasn't been implemented in the beta version.

    But that doesn't change the fact that the recommendation, even in desktop Zotero where PDF metadata retrieval exists, is to save from the article page when you have the option to do so. For an academic PDF that lists its DOI in the first few pages, you'll often get perfectly fine data via metadata retrieval, but we have less control over that, so when it's as simple as pressing the Back button to get back to the article page, you should generally do so before saving.
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