matching attachments to existing zotero entries

arden.drake
I am in the process of switching from Mendeley to Zotero. I have added ZotFile and have things set up to rename and move attachments into a Dropbox folder (with ZotFile) - they are attached in Zotero as a relative path link. I just tested it, and this is working - when I drop a pdf onto an existing entry in Zotero, the file is moved, renamed, and linked correctly.

One of the things I absolutely require is maintaining my tags from Mendeley into Zotero, so I've exported my entries from one of my Mendeley folders as a BibTeX file. After importing it into Zotero, all of my metadata and tags came through and everything looks correct!

Now I want to pull the actual pdfs out of my Mendeley folder and attach them to the Zotero entries. I am assuming that I could not add the pdfs directly to Zotero and keep the Mendeley tags, since the Mendeley metadata is not stored with the pdf directly - hence the need for the two-step process (1 - import BibTeX entries to pull in metadata and tags, 2 - attach pdfs to new entries).

Is there a way to drop a batch of pdfs into Zotero and have them automatically connect to the right entry? I am hoping that I will not have to pull up each pdf one by one and drop it onto the correct entry, but that they can match themselves up. I have a library of +1500 documents...

I hope this is clear - than you!
  • noksagt
    There is no way to auto associate files.
    I'm not a mendeley user, but I'd be somewhat surprised if you can't export or share your days in a way that retains both tags and files.
  • adamsmith
    I'd start by testing -- with a single item -- the two other export formats, i.e. RIS and Endnote XML and see if those work. File attachments in bibtex are a bit tricky. If neither works, please post the bibtex of a single item (i.e. open your bibtex file with a text editor and find an item with an attachment & paste it here) and post it here. There's almost certainly a way to get that to work.
  • johentsch
    Had the same problem and found a workaround: You drag and drop the PDFs into Zotero which will (hopefully) infer the correct metadata and create duplicates. Then you can deduplicate and merge the items.
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