Bug (likely): Unable to (re)open changed PDF on iPad

jandavid
edited 12 days ago
Synced PDFs cannot be opened in the Zotero app on an iPad when they've been changed on a different device.

I have my library synced between computer and iPad (via webdav). Whenever I edit a PDF attached to an item in my Zotero library on my computer in an external PDF viewer (for instance, to manually delete freehand/pencil drawings after other annotations have been moved to the Zotero database) I can no longer open the PDF on the iPad. Whenever I try to download and open the PDF on the iPad, while it apparently downloads it, upon opening I see the first page of the PDF, but a warning pops up, saying:

"Warning This document has been changed on another device. Please reopen it to continue editing."

I tap OK, the PDF closes, and it takes me back to the library list. I try to reopen. Same error message. I close Zotero, reopen, now the item appears with the blue arrow next to the PDF icon indicating the PDF needs to be re-downloaded. I tap it to download, it reopens, same error message. The only way is to delete the PDF from the item and reattach it. But the problem here is that then I lose all highlights stored in the Zotero database.

Help to find a fix much appreciated!
  • jandavid
    Bumping this to make sure somebody sees it ... :)
  • jandavid
    edited 5 days ago
    Wondering ... did anyone see this?

    And generally, what is the preferred way to draw attention to an issue?
    I understand from the guidelines here: https://github.com/zotero/zotero/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md that Zotero Devs prefer any bug reports/feature requests here on this forum. But it feels that there are so many new posts every day that many get lost without ever being seen (the forum also doesn't reveal how many views a post has). So I'm wondering, especially for stuff that looks like a bug (at least to me this one certainly seems like it's not working as intended), how to best report it to make sure it gets to the right people?
  • poettli
    Quoting the forum guidelines:
    Zotero developers and many dedicated community members read every post.

    While many forum posts are answered within minutes, others may not be answered for hours or days.
  • michalrentka
    @jandavid can you reproduce this reliably with any PDF document? Can you check your WebDAV and see whether the document which you change on your computer is updated on your WebDAV? If you can see the updated document on WebDAV, can you maybe try providing detailed reproduction steps? I tried following your steps, but I can't reproduce it.
  • jandavid
    @michalrentka
    Damn! So I've connected to my WebDAV folder, and double-checked, yes, when hitting sync it gets updated. And now I'm checking again my iPad – and now, voilà, I no longer get the error. It works with any PDF, even with the previously problematic one.
    Embarrassing ... I swear I tried everything short of a full computer restart ...
    my hunch is now it might have been some network issue that caused this.
    I truly appreciate you getting back and trying to reproduce it, though ...
  • michalrentka
    edited 5 days ago
    No worries. The one thing I can think of is that the metadata of new file got uploaded to our server, but the WebDAV upload failed, so even though the app "thought" it has a new file, even after re-downloading from WebDAV, the file was still the old one and didn't match our records what it "should be", so you got the error. Now that you checked again it probably just synced to WebDAV in the meanwhile and everything works. Could have been your internet connection or the WebDAV provider. If you encounter it again let us know.
Sign In or Register to comment.