I'm glad someone understands the problem. It is very disappointing that Zotero forces the user to pay for the "premium" plans when it already maintains the files locally stored. To justify the payment, it could at least maintain all on the cloud only, thus freeing space from the user's machine, or allow the user to transfer one file at a time from one machine to the other, thus rendering the storage cap unnecessary. However, I have a feeling this comment will not be published...
Zotero doesn't require require you to pay at all — it's a free, local program that stores an unlimited amount of data and files to your own computer by default.
If you want to sync your files between devices using our servers, you need to pay above a certain amount of space, yes. Data syncing is free and unlimited, and you can sync files using a WebDAV server if you prefer.
If you don't want to store all your files on every computer, you can set files to download "as needed". An upcoming version of Zotero will make it possible to automatically delete local copies of files after a certain number of days to save space, but you can already do that manually if you want.
If you have a question about Zotero in the future, I'd strongly encourage you to just ask it politely in a new thread so that we can answer it instead of spamming other people's troubleshooting threads with complaints and accusations (which is why your previous comment was rejected).
actually, I just tried setting "File Syncing" "Download files" for "as needed", then purged online library, then synced again and I still can't open any of the files on my iPad..
@afeklistov: I'm not sure what the "actually" there is for? You just cleared all files from your online library, which absolutely no one told you to do. At this point you'll need to use Reset File Sync History from the Sync → Reset pane of the Zotero settings from the computer where your files actually exist.
If you're having trouble with something further, please start your own thread — or post in your original thread — and ask for help. Don't just click random buttons you don't understand.
You seem to misundersatnd what that preference does. Download as needed *requires* you to have all files synced (via Zotero or WebDAV) to work properly. With that in place, you can avoid having a large amount of file attachments downloaded to your local computer. E.g., we recommend our graduate assistants joining a ~2,000 item group library with attachments to use that option so that they don't download 2GBs of PDFs, most of which they'll never need, to their local computer.
Purging the library is the opposite of what you'd want (and really should only be used for the precise two scenarios given next to the button).
do you have to be this rude? I purged it because it said storage is full and I wanted to switch to just syncing selected files. Thanks for the advice anyway, I would not touch "reset" option since it's explicitly not recommended.. but will give it a try
@adamsmith: ok, thanks a lot for the recommendations. I'm new to Zotero and all the terminology is not very intuitive.. I was looking for an option to use free Zotero storage and just sync selected files between iPad and Desktop, but from what you wrote it sounds like this can't be done using "as needed" option.
Upgrade Storage
It is very disappointing that Zotero forces the user to pay for the "premium" plans when it already maintains the files locally stored. To justify the payment, it could at least maintain all on the cloud only, thus freeing space from the user's machine, or allow the user to transfer one file at a time from one machine to the other, thus rendering the storage cap unnecessary.
However, I have a feeling this comment will not be published...
Zotero doesn't require require you to pay at all — it's a free, local program that stores an unlimited amount of data and files to your own computer by default.
If you want to sync your files between devices using our servers, you need to pay above a certain amount of space, yes. Data syncing is free and unlimited, and you can sync files using a WebDAV server if you prefer.
If you don't want to store all your files on every computer, you can set files to download "as needed". An upcoming version of Zotero will make it possible to automatically delete local copies of files after a certain number of days to save space, but you can already do that manually if you want.
If you have a question about Zotero in the future, I'd strongly encourage you to just ask it politely in a new thread so that we can answer it instead of spamming other people's troubleshooting threads with complaints and accusations (which is why your previous comment was rejected).
https://www.zotero.org/support/preferences/sync
If you're having trouble with something further, please start your own thread — or post in your original thread — and ask for help. Don't just click random buttons you don't understand.
With that in place, you can avoid having a large amount of file attachments downloaded to your local computer. E.g., we recommend our graduate assistants joining a ~2,000 item group library with attachments to use that option so that they don't download 2GBs of PDFs, most of which they'll never need, to their local computer.
Purging the library is the opposite of what you'd want (and really should only be used for the precise two scenarios given next to the button).