How are snapshots saved on the server?

dclarke
Can't find an answer to this in the documentation, so please forgive if it's there.

I save PDFs on my own computer, attaching a link to the directory they're in to the Zotero entry. Thus, I can't access the file from the Zotero server. The data, and maybe the (useless) link get saved to the server, but not the PDF itself. If I attached the PDF itself instead of just a link, it would sync to the server. I understand how that works.

What is supposed to happen with snapshots of web pages? The snapshot is saved in full on my own computer in the Zotero directory. What is supposed to get synced to the server? Is it just the data about the item, plus maybe the (useless) link to the snapshot on my computer? Or is the full html file of the snapshot supposed to sync (assuming I have configured Zotero to sync files as well as just data)?

I ask because the full html file is not syncing, and before I start troubleshooting, I want to know if it's supposed to be syncing. The documentation says that file syncing will sync attached files (https://www.zotero.org/support/sync); do snapshots not count as "attached files"?

Thanks!
  • dstillman
    edited 13 days ago
    Snapshots are just single-file HTML files. No different from any other stored file.

    See Files Not Syncing.
  • tim820
    edited 13 days ago
    As you are using linked PDF attachment files, they are not synced online by Zotero. But if you have file syncing turned ON, HTML snapshots (stored by Zotero under Zotero\storage) will sync online. As such, they will count towards your online file storage quota (300 mb free). If you have lots of snapshots, they can use up your online quota space quickly. You can search for *.html under Zotero\storage in your OS to see how much space they already occupy on your computer.

    If you don't want HTML snapshots synced online (eg if you have a PDF and don't need a snapshot of its web page too), you can just delete the snapshot file (from within Zotero). Or you can convert HTML files to linked files (stored in another folder on your computer), like your PDFs. Plugins commonly used for managing linked files, like Zotmoov, should move HTML snapshots to a designated folder (if HTML is included in their list of file types).

    Note that snapshots saved before Zotero began storing them as single files (v5.0.93 in 2020) will be in a subfolder with lots of little files. That is likely to make any non-standard storage strategy difficult.
  • dclarke
    Thanks - problem solved. I had some items I'd imported that weren't syncing properly, and apparently that was preventing other items from syncing properly. I just wanted to know if snapshots were *supposed* to be syncing; now I know that they are, and in fact they are now properly syncing for me, so everything is rainbows and unicorns.
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