You will be presented with a dialog where you tell the plugin wich formats should be copied: Here, we will use the Folder Import plugin, which added the “Add Files from Ffolder” option under the “New Item” menu in Zotero (the green icon on top of the main pane)Ĭlick that one, and select the folder that contains your existing files. However, feel free to go to the skip to step 6 if you prefer to start your library from scratch. The next step is to “ingest” your existing PDFs into the Library. Here’s how the remaining options look for me: I like this because it is efective for me to sort papers in chronological order quickly, and it helps me navigate large collections on the iPad. That is, the year, everything separated by one or two hyphens. I recommend you take a couple of minutes and learn the wildcards to build your own. You can use either, but I chose to stick with ZotFile as it’s more versatile. Both Zotero and ZotFile have the ability to rename files based on metadata available for the particular paper. (OPTIONAL) Renaming Rulesįor me, a very important part of managing the library is setting names that are easy to navigate. If you want to retain the subfolder structure of the Base Directory the same as the collections in Zotero, you should also set check the Use subfolder defined by option, and set the value to /%c, which is the ZotFile wildcard corresponding to “collection path”. It is very important that we choose the same folder, or the linked files will not work correctly. For this, we need to set Location of Files to "Custom Location" and choose the same directory we chose as our Base Directory. However, ZotFile does not asume that this is the use case we want, and therefore we need to tell it where we want the files to go. We will be using ZotFile to rename and move all files from the default Zotero directory to the Base Directory, and update the library entry with a link to the moved file. The entry will now point to a Linked File (as opposed to a Stored File). Note: Zotero will still copy files into its default directory, and ZotFile will rename and move that file to the Base Directory, and change the entry in the library. Click Choose., and select a cloud folder that will be synchronized by your cloud provider. To set this up, open the Zotero Preferences, go to the Advanced tab, and then to Files and Folders. Luckily, this can be easily overridden by setting the Linked Attachment Base Directory to point somewhere we want. If this is the case, you will need to ensure that every computer has the exact same path in order for the files to be linked correctly. This is a critical part of the setup, as it’s the one setting that will allow your library to be correctly linked across operating systems.īy default, Zotero points to files using absolute paths. Go ahead and select "Install Add-on From File.", navigate to the directory where the plugins were downloaded, and restart Zotero. ![]() This will open the Add-ons Manager dialogue. To install a plugin, simply download the latest version of each (these are files with xpi extension), open Zotero and go to Tools > Add-ons: (You will need to install this one only on the computer where you want to build the first Zotero Library, in all other computers you will get all the items synced automatically). ![]() Folder Import: You need this plugin only if you want to avoid importing several papers manually.ZotFile: This plugin will take care of renaming the PDFs based on fields of the paper, as well as keeping the folder structure coherent with Zotero Collections.A way to avoid manually adding 400+ papers and books to Zotero.īelow is the step-by-step guide on how to achieve all of these without spending a week fiddling with all the plugins and configurations.Because then (and at the time of writing) Zotero does not have an iOS app. ![]() I wanted to keep the file structure I was manually handling to be maintained.A solution compatible with Google Drive.My annotations to be synced across all of these platforms (so, all of them should be pointing to the same version of the file).A library that I can access from my laptop (a Mac), my lab workstation (dual boot Windows and Ubuntu), and the iPad.Configuring it for my use case, however, was not an easy task. ![]() Unless (of course) I started paying them for features such as storing my files in the cloud, or syncing the entries across multiple computers.Īs usual, I went with the not-so-fully-featured-but-free option: Zotero, and never looked back. Mostly because rather sooner than later it felt like I could not really have the control I wanted. However, I was not happy with most reference management software. Since the beginning of the PhD, I knew I needed a better way to handle a library than collecting a huge file with BibTeX entries.
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