Transfering linked pdf's of references registered in Mendeley to Zotero - how to?

stevencer
Hi,

I want to transfer linked pdf's registered in a private group in Mendeley (see print screen) to a new group in Zotero, but I don't no how to do this without losing the link between the reference and the pdf. The collection consists of 4204 references with a pdf link in total of about 16,4 GB.
So I want to know if there is a proper way before I order a storage plan.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u407729/bfuo2mxomwvx2qbb9itr.jpg

Thanks in advance for the help!
  • poettli
    According to https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/mendeley_import#known_issues
    It’s not possible to directly import group libraries. To import items in group libraries, copy the group items to a collection in your Mendeley library before importing. You can then create a Zotero group and drag imported collections or items to that group.
  • stevencer
    Thanks for your feedback, but transfering the references is not the problem I am dealing with, it's the linked pdf that is not transfered when exporting them. How can I handle this without losing the link with the reference?
  • dstillman
    edited April 24, 2025
    Exporting them how? Zotero has a built-in Mendeley importer — documented on the page linked above — but it doesn't support Mendeley groups directly.

    If you're talking about exporting to some file format instead, 1) you'd have to say exactly what you're doing, 2) that's going to be a less-complete transfer, and 3) you'd have to share an example record from the file. But we recommend you instead do what is quoted above.
  • stevencer
    Hello, I followed the procedure above. I only could transfer 698 pdf items, the rest of the references (3513) were not linked to a pdf.
    Is there a way to download al these pdf's before exporting them without clicking them open one by one, as you can see on the print screen not al pdf's are downloaded yet.
  • dstillman
    You didn't answer my question. What do you mean by "exporting"? Again, you should be using our built-in Mendeley importer, not any sort of "export".
  • stevencer
    I use the 'copy as' function in Mendeley reference manager for collecting the 4204 references in an Bibtex entry, so also their linked pdf and import them in Mendeley in my personal library in a specific folder. So that I can use the Mendeley importer of Zotero as you mentioned. Not all pdf's are copied to my personal library in Mendeley (only 698 pdf's of 3513 pdf's), I guess because their were not fully downloaded, but prepared for download, see the special icons in my print screen and not the specific pdf icon instead. My question is how I can activate these files (the remaining 3513 files) so that I can import them in Zotero by using the importer?
  • dstillman
    You shouldn't be doing anything with BibTeX. You can just copy items between libraries within Mendeley and then use the Zotero importer.
Sign In or Register to comment.