editing metadata when retrieve metadata fails

cheveigne
Add pdf to library, ask Zotero to retrieve metadata, Zotero fails. OK, but how can I add the metadata in by hand?

All I see is a panel to the right with buttons 'view file' and 'show file', and a panel to edit text, none of which are useful to me in this context. Am I missing something?

Alain
  • adamsmith
    Create a new item using the green plus sign, attach the pdf using drag&drop, then add the metadata by hand.

    Automatically attaching a pdf to an empty new item when retrieve metadata fails is a long planned feature, that will make the process a lot less clumsy.
  • amacom73
    I just did a major library cleanup and had to create a whole bunch of parent items manually for non-indexable or otherwise metadataless PDFs--it was a big bummer because, of course, the new parent item shows up in a completely different place in the library no matter how you sort it, so you either have to drag the PDF hundreds of items up the list, or go to the new item and give it a name that starts similarly enough to the PDF that they sort to the same place in the list. Automatically attaching the PDF to the empty new item on metadata failure would have saved me a lot of time. Even an option to create parent item with same name as PDF would have cut a bunch of steps out.

This is an old discussion that has not been active in a long time. Instead of commenting here, you should start a new discussion. If you think the content of this discussion is still relevant, you can link to it from your new discussion.