Move a copy of a PDF out of Zotero

dstillman · September 5, 2023

This discussion was created from comments split from: Downloading PDFs to my PC from Zotero..

craigxmartin · September 5, 2023

I was having the same problem as Katherine. And still do. Yes, it is true I can do a search in Finder on a Mac to try to find the pdf within the labyrinth of Zotero's storage folders on my hard-drive, but there should be an easy way to just move a pdf from within Zotero to a separate folder on my harddrive, where I can use a different app to manipulate it (like an annotator on an iPad). Why not save it initially? Well, I have research assistants finding materials for me, and sometimes only posting the pdf within Zotero - I want to be able to move a copy of that pdf out of Zotero. Is there no easy way to do that?

dstillman · September 5, 2023

(Your question is different, so I've moved this to a new thread.)

If you just want to use a file outside of Zotero, you can just right-click and Show File to reveal the file in Finder, and then open it in whatever program you want, drag it somewhere, AirDrop it, etc.

If you want to actually make a copy of a file, you can just drag the attachment item straight from the items list to a filesystem folder. You can also drag directly to some email clients (e.g., Gmail or Thunderbird).

Yes, it is true I can do a search in Finder on a Mac to try to find the pdf within the labyrinth of Zotero's storage folders on my hard-drive

This is silly, though. The whole point of search is that it doesn't matter where the files are stored. Zotero uses the 8-character folders to store your files in a reliable way across devices, but it names the files themselves after the parent metadata, so there's nothing stopping you from just typing an author's name and/or the title into Spotlight and either opening the file directly or pressing Cmd-Return to open its containing folder.