Using alternative method for import from Mendeley - what happens to PDFs?

das1002
edited July 18, 2022
Hi.. I like the look of Zotero and am trying to migrate from Mendeley. I tried the direct import and it just produced the folder structure, but no actual references were there. I am trying again, but it is going very slowly or may have hung less than a third of the way.

So I am trying the alternative method suggested at https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/mendeley_local_import

It's still sync'ing ; my main question is what happens to the PDFs (I have them in my online Mendeley library).

I'm concerned that the PDFs may not get imported into Zotero, since in the local Mendeley Desktop library, PDFs aren't downloaded - they're just those little icons showing that you COULD download them if you clicked.

Is there a way to automatically download the PDFs (into my local Mendeley Desktop, so that they will then be moved into the Zotero library?

If I'd like to send the team a bug report for the automatic import that seems to have stalled, how do I find that number?

Thank you so much to all who work on Zotero; looking forward to trying it out.
  • dstillman
    edited July 18, 2022
    Just use the default importer. The alternative one is for people who, e.g., are having login problems with their online Mendeley library.

    For a large import, this may take a while. You can open Help → Debug Output Logging → View Output to see if things are happening. If you think it's getting stuck repeatedly, that may be a problem with the Mendeley servers, but we'd want to see a Debug ID for an attempt that fails (after restarting Zotero).

    Don't delete anything in Zotero before reimporting. It won't create duplicates.
  • das1002
    Thanks. I tried it again and this time it failed early (instead of just stalling) - with ReportID 831174173.
  • dstillman
    What do you mean by "failed"?
  • dstillman
    edited July 18, 2022
    And we need a Debug ID for the operation, not a Report ID. See my link above.
  • das1002
    I'm afraid I can't remember the message I got. I think it was some error. But now you mention it, I went back and saw the imported folder.

    It has all the right folders by name (same structure of folders as the Mendeley library) but each folder has zero actual references listed, which is a similar problem I had earlier.

    What can one do?
  • dstillman
    As I say, we would need a Debug ID for an operation that doesn't import any items.
  • das1002
    Thanks for your responsiveness.! I tried to generate another DebugID - D1722750748

    Does that seem right?
  • dstillman
    edited July 18, 2022
    (1)(+0030008): HTTP GET https://api.mendeley.com/documents?view=all&marker=[…]&limit=500&reverse=false&order=asc failed with status code 0

    (2)(+0000003): Channel status was 2152398850
    The Mendeley servers are taking a very long time to respond to one particular request (>30 seconds, whereas most take ~2–7 seconds), and Zotero was timing out the request after 30 seconds. There's a chance the request will just never complete, but in the latest Zotero beta, we've increased the timeout to 60 seconds to give their servers more time to respond. Install that and try another import with debug logging enabled, and if it fails again, provide the Debug ID for that.
  • das1002
    edited July 19, 2022
    EDIT - updated.. I can see it's still adding references.. so I'll wait and see what happens this way. But thank you for the suggestion above.

    Thank you - I will try that shortly. I actually had started the alternative import via the older version of Mendeley.. that is running in the background and seems to be working, although it also seems to have stalled about 85% of the way through... I'm not sure !
  • das1002
    Thank you so much for your help - it worked (the method using the older version of Mendeley) and the database is usable

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