Note sync error

ssrsrb
Hi,
Not sure if this is a Zotero or BetterNotes issue. I am using a BetterNotes script to create A New Standalone Note from Template. The note looks fine and does not seem to be excessively long. The note is a standalone item.
The note does not sync. Red exclamation mark at the top right. Text: The note [NAME of NOTE] is too long to sync.

Can you help?
  • dstillman
    The message itself means what it says. If it's a note created by Better Notes, you should ask the plugin developer to look at the note and figure out why it's so long.
  • ssrsrb
    Thank you.
    I wrote the script. It is extracting information from items in a collection. The output length varies. I don't know how to measure the length of a note. Maybe this approximation helps: A word export is 106 pages 209640 characters and 28687 words. I have lots of PDF's and a few word documents that sync without problems and are more than 200 pages long, have more words, and characters.
    Are selfstanding notes different than pdfs or word docs? What is the maximum sync size?
  • hsiangyu_wong
    When the app says it's too long, it is just too long. The citation information stored in the note can be quite big if you have a lot of citations/annotations from multiple items.

    Also, this may not be the best (or most recommended) way to use the BetterNotes plugin - it is recommended to create notes by topic (e.g. per paper) and grouping/connecting them with links.
  • ssrsrb
    I am able to run the script successfully to create notes without problems. I just like to know what the parameters are. "Too long" is not helpful.
    I am using BetterNotes, because I have not been able to create a Zotero add-on which is really what I need. I still need to learn how to create a Zotero add-on. Meanwhile I got BetterNotes to do what I need it to do. If I had an idea of what "too long" constitute I could probably modify the script to make it work.
  • adamsmith
    Notes have a 200k character limit. Those are actual characters used, so annotations, formatting, etc. add to the count.
    And yes, notes are fundamentally distinct from attachments. If you want to extract information into large text/md files, I'd attach those, not use notes.
  • ssrsrb
    Thank you! This is very helpful. As I said, I am not able to extra information (e.g, tags, annotations, comments) from PDF directly into a large text or md files. As far as I can tell I need JavaScript (for add-on) or Python to connect to the API. I am somewhat fluent in R and the package to connect to Zotero does not seem to be up-to-date. Until I have learned enough JavaScript to create an add-on I need to use the notes.
  • hsiangyu_wong
    When talking about "too long" I mean too long for sync, as is stated in your post.

    The Better Notes itself allows you to directly exporting a template to file, e.g. markdown or anything else supported by the plugin, via File -> Export Template to File. You don't necessarily need to generate a note if you don't want to.

    Another options is to modify your template to not generate annotations with citations (you can pass an option to the API, i.e. `Zotero.BetterNotes.api.convert.annotations2html(annotations, { skipCitations: true })`). As mentioned above, citation data sometimes can be very long in string length.
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