Of course. You can delete attachment items like any other items, and once you empty the trash and sync, those will stop counting against your online storage space.
I don't have an answer but hop it is alright to hop on the same thread with a few follow up question on this topic, as to not clutter up the forums. Is there a way to see how much space that the files that I currently have are taking up? Can this be viewed by collection/subcollection? Is it possible to see how much space I need to accommodate files that have been added since I surpassed my storage limit? Do bibliographic metadata items themselves take up space, or is it mostly the files (PDFs, etc)?
@mikanovd: For now, you can just check the size of the 'storage' folder in your Zotero data directory for a rough estimate (though that will also include files in any group libraries). You can also use some utility for your OS to find large files and then delete those within Zotero.
In a future version, we'll make it possible to see storage usage by file within Zotero.
@dstillman Thanks for clarifying this for me! Sounds like a great idea for the future version of Zotero - would that be in a Zotero 7 update, or the very distant future in Zotero 8?
@dstillman back in November I upgraded to 2gb, but I have hit that limit now. I'm a little perplexed as to how that happened, but I am going through to try to remove some bigger files. I figured out how to use my windows search tools in the "storage" folder on my hard drive to identify the largest files. If possible, I'd prefer to convert the files to linked - saved locally on my hardrive with the annotations preserved, but no longer taking up space in my zotero storage. I see there is a tool function to "convert linked files to stored files" - is there any way to do the reverse? Or do you have any other tips for how I can preserve my zotero annotations before removing a file that is taking up too much space in my zotero storage?
@mikanovd use the Zotmoov plugin's right-click options to convert/move a stored attachment file to a linked file (Zotero's file renaming will also be invoked, unless turned off). Annotations are preserved.
Move Selected to Directory moves the file to the nominated 'Move To' folder.
Move Selected to Custom Directory asks you where you want to move the file to.
@tim820 Zotmoov is what I was looking for!! Had to putter around for a little while figuring things out, but I just freed up 7% of my storage from moving a single attachment. Thrilled to find this tool, thank you!
Upgrade Storage
Is there a way to see how much space that the files that I currently have are taking up? Can this be viewed by collection/subcollection? Is it possible to see how much space I need to accommodate files that have been added since I surpassed my storage limit?
Do bibliographic metadata items themselves take up space, or is it mostly the files (PDFs, etc)?
In a future version, we'll make it possible to see storage usage by file within Zotero.
Regular items don't take up storage space.
If possible, I'd prefer to convert the files to linked - saved locally on my hardrive with the annotations preserved, but no longer taking up space in my zotero storage. I see there is a tool function to "convert linked files to stored files" - is there any way to do the reverse? Or do you have any other tips for how I can preserve my zotero annotations before removing a file that is taking up too much space in my zotero storage?
Move Selected to Directory moves the file to the nominated 'Move To' folder.
Move Selected to Custom Directory asks you where you want to move the file to.