Items not updating between personal and group library II

zinvemar
Hi,

Please, I cannot get the changes I've made to items to update between my groups and individual libraries. I've been editing entries in my personal library, such as abstract, tags, notes, etc. To try and get the changes to update in my groups libraries.

How do I synchronize changes between libraries?

Regards
  • adamsmith
    not easily: delete the item in the group library, emptry the group trash, move the item from the personal library over.
    Improvements on that are obviously planned, but no eta.
  • lexorpedia
    I know this is an old thread, but it seems that this is still the only workaround. Is this correct?

    For example, I am able to update the group libraries OK using the above workaround, but I wanted to let people know in case they stumble on this there is still a further wrinkle if used via the Google docs connector. I found that any existing citations in the document need to be re-inserted if any of the group items change, even if the majority of the data (e.g. the author and date) is the same.

    Nothing visible will change, even on a refresh of the document, the old bibliographic version stays in the Google docs bibliography, even though it has disappeared from the group library. I have to manually delete the old citation and re-insert it.

    So it makes keeping the items up to date even harder, and more likely to drift. In the light of this, my overall workflow is now:

    1. keep all citations and updates to them, as centralized as possible within the personal library
    2. only add them to the group library them when the metadata is as complete as possible (ideally before the Google doc is created and citations start being added)
    3. avoid as many updates of items that are in the group library as possible
    4. if an update of a citation is required, then I would *very carefully* on a citation-by-citation basis:
    4(a) update the item in my personal library
    4(b) delete group library copy, empty trash, and copy over the new citation (as per above)
    4(c) search for *every* place the original citation was used in Google doc, remove it, then re-insert it.

    Did I miss anything? Or is there any way to streamline this so it isn't as time-consuming?

    Thanks
  • adamsmith
    Nothing new in terms of technology, but for your workflow, why wouldn't you, instead of 4 a/b/c, just update the metadata in both person and group library? While not ideal, that seems much faster and less error prone.
  • lexorpedia
    If it was for a trivial change (e.g. fixing the spelling or adding an author initial), yes I agree. But for citations I either added to Zotero long time ago, or were imported from another source (e.g. BibTeX), those citations are missing a lot metadata (DOIs etc.), so I have been going back and readding them to my personal library, via the browser plugin from the journal source to pull in all the fulltext, DOIs, full author names (many older citations only had initials). Then I merge that duplicate with the original item. That's why I figured I only wanted to do that on the personal library side.

    However, I guess I could do the same with the group library version of the same citation, since they are functionally different entities anyway. Then I wouldn't need to re-insert them, right? It somehow doesn't feel right doing it that way.
  • mjthoraval
    You can use a Duplicate Item (available from a right-click on the item) to transfer the updated metadata to the group library and then merge it with the old item in the group library. Merging should keep the citation working.
    It is still a bit painful as you still need to delete the duplicate in My Library. But probably better then your step 4(c).
  • adamsmith
    was going to suggest the duplicate & merge approach, too. (I have no knowledge or estimate on technical updates on this, but Zotero devs have talked about this for a while now and lots of updates are landing currently so I hope you won't have to do this much longer)
  • lexorpedia
    Ah - good catch @mjthoraval. I was able to get this working, duplicate the entry in the personal library, drag to the group library, merge, then delete the duplicate in the personal library. yes, it's better than my 4(c). thanks, that's a good workaround.

    One thing, though, have to be careful to delete the duplicate, not the original, otherwise I could lose the connections in documents (and presumably to collections) to citations that use the version in the personal library. It looks like I can use the "Date Created" to distinguish the two. Is there any other way to check if in doubt?

    @adamsmith: glad to hear that there may be more technical support for this in the works. I'll keep a watch on the development. Meanwhile this workaround will work for my case, and is a lot less work.
  • mjthoraval
    You can also merge in My Library instead of deleting. This will not make any confusion between them as they have the same metadata.

    Otherwise looking at the "Date Added" or "Date Modified" would work indeed. I usually sort by "Date Modified", so the item I have modified and its duplicate are together, and it is easy to identify the duplicate as the last modified item.
    If your item has attachments, you can also see the difference between them by showing the "Attachments" column, as the duplicate will not have any attachment.
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