Annotations are not synced

victordong
I'm using the zotero pdf reader to annotate, however I found that the annotations I made one one device was not synced to another, while the pdf file seems to sync. What might be the issue here and how I could fix this ?
  • dstillman
    edited December 18, 2023
    Are you opening the PDF in Zotero on both devices, or in an external reader on one?

    If an external reader, see Annotations in Database.

    If the built-in reader, see Changes Not Syncing.
  • kzssc
    edited December 28, 2023
    @dstillman could you confirm, in case of using external reader, that the pdf files (and annotations embed in file) will sync? and if so, at what frequency? on change?

    Currently, my attachments edited externally are syncing, but since it's not mentioned on the pages above i'd like to make sure. Too panic to cause another database problem.

    edit: understand from https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/highlighting_and_annotating_pdfs that pdfs are indeed synced by zotero, now just waiting for the insight on the mechanism for syncing! :D
  • dstillman
    edited December 28, 2023
    This is explained in Annotations in Database. Not going to get into specifics — the logic is too complicated. It will keep the file in sync, but it can't do so as quickly or efficiently as when you use the built-in reader.
  • dstillman
    (To be clear, the complicated logic for externally modified files is about auto-sync. Clicking the Sync button should always check all local files for changes, but that's inefficient and resource intensive.)
  • drsb
    @dstillman A question just for clarification: When using external (embedded) annotations in PDF files that are only linked attachments, no syncing is done for the annotations, right?
    So when I do a manual sync of the linked PDFs with a third party tool between devices, I still have to open Zotero's PDF viewer on each device to get the annotations in each database?
  • dstillman
    @drsb: Yes, that's correct — embedded annotations aren't synced. But we do plan to make embedded annotations available to Zotero without opening the PDF on each computer.
  • drsb
    That sounds good - and thank you for the confirmation.
Sign In or Register to comment.