iPad file sync error: Annotation page label is too long for attachment [file] debug code D1706616167

rickyhm
I marked up a synced pdf on my iPad using the Zotero app and when I was finished reading, I tried syncing it so that I could look at it and my annotations on my computer but I got about 40 errors “Annotation page label is too long for attachment [file name].” About half actually don’t have the file name and the other half that do are split between two documents. I had annotated a different pdf earlier but that one seemed to sync without issues. The new pdf is not syncing the annotations at all though. The annotations are a mix of highlights, highlights with notes, drawings, and sticky notes.

This might be unrelated but I was messing around with the OCR of this particular file in Adobe Acrobat. Nothing looks wrong but I thought I would mention.

My debug code is D1706616167.
  • dstillman
    You should be able to paste 5M75NCT8 and Z2J37XNC into the search bar to see the attachments in question. (At least, I think it will match the parent items of the attachment item keys. Let us know if not.)

    Are those files that you added on this iPad? Can you email them to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread?
  • dstillman
    "annotationPageLabel": "W[…] - 1968 - H[…].tiff"
    @rickyhm: It looks like somehow the page label got set to a TIFF filename. Do you know how this would've happened?
  • rickyhm
    Hi, yes. I was basically trying out an OCR thing with Adobe Acrobat and had to turn all the pages from that pdf into images (tiffs) and then put them together into a pdf again, and then I didn't touch the page labels, which was the issue. I figured out how to fix it. To keep the annotations from the iPad, I exported a copy with the annotations, attached it under the same parent item, and then on my computer I opened the copy, imported the annotations, and then opened the file with Acrobat to change the page labels. Then I just deleted the original one. I also looked up those attachment names and just deleted them since theyre old copies at this point. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

    Side note, while I was importing the annotations, all the highlight colors were a washed out version of the Zotero colors so I manually re-colored them. Wasn't super tedious but just some feedback about the process.

    Do you still want me to send over those files?
  • rickyhm
    Oh and I wasn't sure if renaming the pages on the original file would've created competing copies and if that would've caused the computer copy to overwrite the iPad copy, which is why I didn't mess with the original file on my computer and did the iPad export workaround instead.
  • dstillman
    Sorry, not totally following that. Are you saying you set these page labels manually? Or they were set automatically by Acrobat? We're just trying to figure out whether there's any expectation that these would be valid page labels and should be kept as opposed to automatically truncated. Generally we expect these to just be page numbers (and in the desktop reader it's possible to update these page numbers in batch), so the server currently limits these to 50 characters.
  • rickyhm
    Yes, the page labels were set manually more or less. It was more so that I combined all those tiffs into one pdf and then just saved it without changing the page labels. But it was all because I took apart the pdf and put it back together. When you combine several files into one pdf in Acrobat, Acrobat keeps the individual file names as the page labels. I don't think most people will run into this problem with journal articles, books, etc but something to keep in mind.

    Question, if I had updated the page numbers in the desktop reader, would that have deleted the iPad version of the file with the annotations? Or would they have combined in some way. Because the iPad version had not been able to sync to the desktop.
  • dstillman
    It's the annotations on the iPad that can't sync, not the PDF itself. If you fix the PDF file on your desktop, the updated file with the fixed labels will sync, but I don't think the existing annotations on the iPad would be updated with the corrected labels to allow them to sync.

    We can probably just truncate page labels at 50 or 75 characters when trying to upload annotations, though.
  • rickyhm
    Okay, got it. Yea truncating them would be good. At the very least a warning that first time you upload a file telling you that the page labels are too long for annotation syncing. Thanks for your help!
  • michalrentka
    @rickyhm can you please start debugging and start a sync? Then send me the debug id when you're done syncing. We noticed a thing in your logs that I'd like to investigate. Thanks!
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