unable to annotate articles

AnnaMedendorp
Help! I feel incredibly stupid but I cannot figure out how to annotate articles. I've opened the article in Zotero and can see the buttons for annotations, but they are greyed out and do not work to highlight the text.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u1010570/x8dj4cub614774u0lv19.jpg

I have updated Zotero and looked through the settings, but I can't figure it out.

Thanks in advance for the help!
  • tim820
    Can you select individual lines of text in that particular PDF in any other PDF reader ? If not, the PDF is likely a scanned (image) PDF that would require processing by OCR to make the text selectable.
  • mjthoraval
    @AnnaMedendorp: If you have opened the PDF file from a Group Library with restricted File Editing settings, you cannot add annotations to it:
    https://www.zotero.org/support/groups#library_settings

    You would need to copy the item to your personal library to add annotations there.
  • AnnaMedendorp
    @tim820 yes, I can. I think (hope) @mjthoraval is correct and it's something about the File Editing settings. My colleague said the settings looked like I should be able to edit the files, but I'll ask him to double check.

    Our hope/goal was to be able to annotate the same articles in Zotero
  • thinkround
    I have a group library with public data and closed membership. Also these file settings:

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u5982926/80q8l5td7tpkd6vwv9up.png

    As admin I can annotate. Any other members of the group can only view the files, but not upload new files or annotate existing files. Anonymous users cannot view the files as expected.

    I would expect that members should be able to add annotations to the files. What else could File editing mean otherwise? If it's just File viewing, then the setting is misnamed. What allows members to annotate is the setting Library Editing, but that also allows editing, deleting and adding items, which I don't want to grant to my group members, only reading and annotating.

    @dstillman What is the setting File editing supposed to do?
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