Error downloading any PDF

dstillman Zotero Team
This discussion was created from comments split from: "Error ocurred while saving this item" when saving to Zotero.
  • mariaskoutaridou
    Hello, I have a similar issue whenever I am trying to download a pdf and save it to my library. I was just trying from Plato.Stanford.edu (pdf version as I am a member) and it won't work. The blue pdf sign appears at the top right, but getting the message :
    An error occurred while saving this item. Try again, and if the issue persists see Getting Help for more information."
    I am getting this in every single pdf from any other website I am trying to download. Anyone has come across that? Any idea why and how to resolve this? Thanks .
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    (Please start new threads for new issues. I've moved this to a new thread.)

    Can you provide an example URL you're trying to save from and a Debug ID from Zotero for an attempt that fails?
  • mariaskoutaridou
    apologies for the delay. My problem persists with any attempt to save a pdf directly online. If i save the pdf to my documents and try to add it later to ZOTERO it will not index it, so I don't have info about the paper or book chapter in that case below.

    https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/5A3C0199F291D95912D5827046A10149/9781139001571c18_p413-440_CBO.pdf/hobbes_and_his_contemporaries.pdf
  • adamsmith
    edited January 6, 2023
    You're missing the debug ID (from Zotero, not the connector): https://www.zotero.org/support/debug_output#debug_output_logging
  • mariaskoutaridou
    D553076523
  • mariaskoutaridou
    A different issue that I found out about recently is when trying to add quotations to my word document from a section I have saved in a document/paper/book in ZOTERO . i am going to ZOTERO extension in WORD, and trying to add citations but it allows me only to select from some limited annotations. please note that these annotations are not relevant to the search I make in ZOTERO bar. For example, I will put RAWLS, and irrelevant annotations from other books/ papers will appear as available to cite in my word document. hope this makes sense. thanks in advance for all your help.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    edited January 6, 2023
    Please start separate threads for separate issues.

    Your debug output doesn't show a save attempt. You just logged your starting Zotero.

    That URL is for the PDF itself. While you should be able to save PDFs directly, and if you provide a proper Debug ID we may be able to tell you why it's not working for you, on a supported site like this you always want to save from the article page, not the PDF. Zotero will automatically attach the PDF if you have access to it.

    As for retrieving metadata if you download the PDF and add it manually, it looks like the way the footer is laid out in this PDF is causing the DOI not to be detected correctly in order to retrieve metadata. We'll try to fix that. You can right-click on the PDF, choose Create Parent Item, and paste in the correct DOI (10.1017/CCOL0521836670.019), but going forward you should just save from the article page on sites like this. If the attached PDF isn't saving for you, we'll debug that separately with a proper Debug ID.
  • mariaskoutaridou
    Thanks for your help. To be honest I followed the instructions you have about the Debug ID because for me this is rocket science I do not understand anything. Not sure what it means or what happened! But anyway thanks for your help. I couldn't download it from the article page directly because it is a book chapter. On the initial webpage, you had to tick which chapters you wanted, so ZOTERO extension would not work there. I tried though what you said about the metadata and retrieving it by creating a parent item and it works perfectly, thank you!
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    The point is just that you need to actually reproduce the problem while logging, not just submit it immediately. You didn't log yourself doing anything, just starting Zotero.

    I'd recommend you provide this, since you should certainly be able to save PDFs to Zotero from the browser — both directly and linked from supported webpages — and if that isn't working we can help you debug it.
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