Keeping PDF annotations when moving files into a group

dstillman Zotero Team
This discussion was created from comments split from: Group PDF annotation - some bugs and suggestions.
  • JakobHeiss
    Did I understand correclty that it is not possible to keep the annotatins when I move papers from a collection into a group? For our group the only purpose of Zotero is to sync annotations within the group.
    I just imported the groups via collections from Mendeley and now I am very dissapointed that all the annotations are grone in the group. Is there some possibility to move the annotations from the collection into the group? Otherwise it is hard for us to move from Mendeley to Zotero.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    No, that thread was from earlier this year during the Zotero 6 beta period, so it's mostly not relevant. (When in doubt, it's almost always better to start a new thread.)

    Annotations are preserved when you copy PDFs between libraries, unless you've disabled that from the General pane of the preferences.

    Do you see the annotations when you open the PDF in your personal library? What's the 8-character folder name if you right-click one of the affected attachments and select Show File?

    (Also, just to clarify terminology here, "collections" don't imply "personal library" — they exist in groups too. So it's confusing to refer to collection when you actually just mean your personal library.)
  • JakobHeiss
    edited October 27, 2022
    I have the default settings. I just installed Zotereo and I have not changed any settings.

    In Mendeley, I've created a collection before importing everything to Zotereo. In Zotero I have for each former Mendeley collection a subfolder(subcollection?) of the Imported folder(collection), which is a subfoldersubcollection) of My Library. There the annoations are still here. The 8-character folder name is Z94R4U77.

    I copied all the entries of of the former collection into the group via the web Library.
    In the group I don't see any annotations. There the 8-character folder name is 6KPFT6UW.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    Oh, don’t use the web library for this. Delete the items in the group and copy them again using Zotero itself.

    We’ll look into adding annotation copying to the web library, but the desktop app just has vastly more functionality, and it’s what you want to use for any significant work.
  • JakobHeiss
    In the groups section of the general preferences all boxes are checked (as I said I did not cahnge anything in the preferences, except adding synchrinization)
  • JakobHeiss
    Great! Thank you very much! This has worked perfectly via the desktop app :)
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