Use Zotero 6 with Zotero 7?

nhan000
edited August 31, 2023
(Edit for clarity of the highlight feature)

I'm aware that once I create underline or ink annotations in Zotero 7, the database is no longer compatible with Zotero 6.

I really want to use the EPUB annotation now. My question is if I use Zotero 7 but only make text and area highlights for PDFs, and text highlight for EPUBs, would that still be compatible with Zotero 6? (I'm on Windows 11, and I'm asking about using Zotero 6 installed version with Zotero 7 zip file).
  • dstillman
    I don't think you'd get an error with just EPUB text/area annotations, but I can't say for sure. But we'll be putting out a new Zotero 6 build (6.0.27) in the next few days that should avoid these compatibility errors.
  • nhan000
    I saw the latest announcement. Great news for me! Many thanks to Zotero team!

    Is there a way to preserve the plugin state between Zotero 6 and 7? When I switch back to Zotero 6 I have to enable the plugins one by one, because they're not compatible with Zotero 7 so they're disabled. Then I have to restart Zotero for the plugins to be active. Would be great if they're automatically enabled when I use Zotero 6.
  • dstillman
    No, sorry.
  • topps
    I just found one delightful approach to using Z6 and Z7 together. I had found that Z6 was getting pretty slow on a large DOCX with lots of citations. I closed it and brought up Z7 (both are installed side by side in Applications). I opened MS Word and did another round of inserting the same citations into an earlier version of the DOCX. As many have noted, Z7 is much quicker at this. Slowness issue solved.
    But I still use Zutilo a lot with Z6 - so I was delighted to see that my Z6 instance still has Zutilo enabled. It looks like there is no fight between different versions of the MS Word addon. So I can use Z6 and Z7 in turn, depending on what I am doing. Happy day.
  • topps
    Experimenting more with this. Increasingly I was running into the problem of Z6 and Z7 plugins fighting with each other.
    I found that if I was careful only to load Z6 compatible plugins to Z6 (duh) then it would work fine. But when I launched Z7 on same machine, it would tend to disable these plugins again, even if I did not use them.
    I am happy to say that the main plugins that I use, BetterBibTex, BetterNotes both now have Z7-compatible versions.
    Zutilo cannot be fixed - see note from Donna in another thread. Use 'Zotero Actions & Tags' plugin instead. This, with a bit of tweaking, will allow you to 'copy item links' which was the main function that I needed from Zutilo.
    So for me now, the switch to Z7 is complete.
    But, as long as you don't start messing with EPUB files, it is otherwise feasible to run Z6 and Z7 on the same machine.
  • nhan000
    Thanks @topps for your insights. For those who still really needs Zotero 6 plugins, you can refer to this guide https://www.jdavidstark.com/how-to-configure-zotero-6-and-zotero-7-side-by-side/ (I'm not the author).
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