[[Complete Walkthrough]] Zotero & iPad Workflow For Zettelkasten Literature Notes

welcome back everyone if you're new here my name is brian jinx and today we're going to be talking about the zotero to ipad workflow for annotating your pdfs getting markdown notes and putting them into your obsidian vault for your zettlecoston personal knowledge management system if this sounds interesting to you or if you're one of the many people who have been requesting this video for a long time hopefully you will enjoy this i will try to keep it brief and to the point and there's a lot of really cool things we can do with the zot file or add-on in zotero and one of one one of them is syncing across to your ipads through something like icloud or another cloud service so that we can annotate and then re-upload our pdfs to zotero with extracted annotations and already be ready and set to get those into obsidian so if that sounds interesting stay tuned so if you already have followed the zotfile zotero workflow for annotating pdfs and getting markdown notes into obsidian using my workflow video that i'll put a card up there for if you've already done that then you're not gonna have to do too much else because we're all only using one of those two add-ons that i mentioned zot file within zotero to actually do everything i'm going to be showing you today so if you just freshly downloaded zotero add the edit the zot file add-in then that's it that's all you have to do and one other point i should mention if this isn't obvious to anybody is that because zotero is cross-platform meaning it can be used on linux mac and windows and because this zot file workflow with tablet syncing works with pretty much whatever cloud service provider you have dropbox onedrive icloud this means that if your tablet can access a cloud service then this workflow will likely work for you so you don't need to be restricted to apple products you don't need to be restricted to a particular cloud service provider or any of these things you're pretty open with what you can actually use this on now just because of what i'm actually using and what i have i have a macbook pro i have an ipad and this thing is like the seventh or ninth generation it's an older one it's not a pro either it's just it's just a cheap ipad and i have the apple pencil first generation and i am using icloud so basically all the apple stuff because this is what i have it's the ecosystem so you do not have to be restricted to that but that is just what i am showing you so keep that in mind all right so diving right in now when you first download zotero you are not going to have anything in there but when you add your documents you have all the different things that you have in your zotero library great now you've also downloaded the add-on zot file and if you follow the video i referenced earlier then you download the dot xpi file or whatever and you drop drag and drop it into this tools add-ons menu you just drag and drop it in here there it is you'll likely have to restart zotero after that you're done you're ready to go you're exactly where i'm at right now and about to show you i deleted all the other stuff so i'm actually going to rebuild this from scratch for you on how we actually use and utilize this workflow so first things first we're going to go to tools and then now down because we have zot file installed you'll see zot file preferences click that tablet settings this is where all the magic happens all you need to do is click this use zot file to send and get files from tablet clicking that now you have this feature enabled what's this drop down menu this is basically saying do you want to create saved search folders so you can see all the things that are currently sent to your ipad or tablet and which things that have been sent and are modified i just say yes because why not and now you'll see these two new folders get created these are the tablet files of files that are on your tablet and then the ones that are on your tablet and that have been modified by you now this is likely going to be blank for you if you haven't done this process yet but you can choose where you want your folder to be placed for these files when they get sent to your tablet this is where you want to actually specify somewhere in your cloud service provider folder you know if you have like dropbox or onedrive or icloud you have those folders on your desktop that are the folders that sync to your cloud service that's where we're going to put this folder so you can click choose pick your folder and this is just when i actually put it on to icloud for me if i show folder this is where it actually creates this c icloud drive and zotero pdfs this is what i named it i think i think i named it zotero pdfs but in any case you need to have this folder in this in your cloud service otherwise certain options won't appear and you'll be like wait i just did everything he did why aren't i seeing these options you need to make sure this folder exists so just in case double check make sure this is in here but once you choose that folder you'll see you can see it in here i got a green check mark great what are these other options create subfolders from zotero collections this is basically saying i have a nested collection here i have my library but i also have uh inbox and then a sub collection of all the papers from how to take smart notes by zonka adams and this is a collection of all the papers that i wanted to read that were referenced by that book so it's a sub collection of inbox now what what does this option do this says basically if i send a pdf from this collection the nested collection to my tablet it's going to create that same directory structure on my tablet just to mock it out so i have the same structure so basically i would have an empty folder of inbox even though i have things in there in zotero on my tablet it would be an empty folder saying inbox and then a folder within that folder by the same name how to take smart notes papers and then inside that nested collection folder you'll have the one paper or however many that i sent to my tablet and we'll see this in a live example but i keep this because i really like making sure i know where all the structure and everything is i haven't messed with any of these other options renamed files when they are sent to the tablet i'm pretty sure i left all of these default that's all i really needed to do and then this option down here at the bottom if it's not checked for you i would recommend checking it because it just it simplifies it automatically extract annotations when getting your pdfs back from the tablet so you know if you follow the zotero and zot file workflow of getting their markdown notes what this will do is it will already extract your annotations to the rich text format file in zotero as soon as you pull those files back from your tablet and into your main zotero database so this means that almost all the steps except the final extraction to markdown is done for you just by dragging this back into your zotero database so with all that set that's it we just leave these options and that's as simple as it gets so now here's where the magic happens if i go to my folder and i pick a particular pdf let's do model of creative thinking process on analysis blah blah blah whatever this file is i'm going to right click on this entire thing now this includes only the pdf if i do something like this where it has multiple things in here it would send the whole the whole batch but what we're going to do is we're going to select this paper this pdf the document the entire collected item here right click we're going to say manage attachments and now you see some options here that you might not have seen before send to tablet get from tablet and send to subfolder on tablet these are the options that now this new uh tablet workflow will open up for you so if you send it to tablet it's just going to drop it in at the top level and not care about your folder structure but because we checked that item where i wanted it to send it to a nested subcollections see how this is presenting itself inbox slash how to take smart notes citations this is where i actually have that replicated directory structure so i can actually see how this is actually laid out in my zotero database but replicated in the directory structure on the tablet in my cloud service provider so i'm going to click this option yes please it's going to give a little pop-up here saying it's moved to the tablet what does that do what does that mean well if i go to tags you can now see this is what it was talking about about saved searches underscore tablet because this has now been sent to my tablet so this tag will be added and removed along with a couple others to manage different files being used with this workflow going to tablet files here the saved search we created now this item is on here if i open it oh interesting this is now on here now if i open up my icloud folder go to zotero pdfs interesting inbox how to take notes and ah there's the pdf that's the document it is now on my icloud instance and with this we can now open up icloud or whatever again tablet cloud service provider open that document up on your tablet edit it and then re have those changes synced to the cloud service provider and then pull them back into zotero and let's see what this actually looks like in practice if you enjoy my obsidian content and you have interest in what i'm doing what type of work i'm currently performing and maybe getting information about my upcoming obsidian course that i am developing 0 to 99 obsidian course where you go from absolute beginner never touched any sort of programming or obsidian all the way to where i'm at where i'm working and what i'm doing and all the technologies around obsidian this is a comprehensive course i'm developing on more than just here's the markdown syntax here's how to link two notes together i'm talking about comprehensive zero to whatever you see me doing and that is currently a project i'm undertaking if that sounds interesting to you you can sign up at my uh to my newsletter in the link in the description as well as the pin comment below with all the timestamps to this video so hope to see you there so now on my ipad now that i have those file that file in my icloud instance so i have it on the cloud and i can access it from the ipad i'm going to use my apple pencil and my current ipad tablet to go to my files and now i can see zotero pdf there's the inbox the directory structure i was expecting and then here's the file now you can see i have a little download button because i need to actually pull this down from the cloud onto the tablet so if i do that it'll actually download the file and now i have it excellent so at this point what you're going to need is actually a pdf reader that will let you highlight and add comments now there's again more stuff to the zop file zotero workflow on the obsidian forum post that i did not get into i'm doing pretty much just the easiest thing and this is what is all i need and what i'm doing and works for me but all i really wanted to do was highlight and add comments to those highlights so i can extract those things into markdown now you're gonna need a pdf viewer to do that what i really liked and what is free and what got the job done easily enough was adobe acrobat i don't really like adobe but it gets the job done it's free for all of the features that i needed which is highlights and comments and that's it so i downloaded adobe and now what we can do is we can go to our file that is on our cloud instance open up that file and in the top right you're going to see open in acrobat and that is what we want to do i'm going to open it up and it's going to actually download that file into adobe and we're going to be able to edit it now so now i can take my apple pencil i can hold and i can drag to select a bunch of text i can highlight this and this is what i would be doing if i was going to be going through a document or a research paper i can then tap on that highlight i can actually write a note so i can type hello or hello i can type i can write hello world and now it will actually put my text in there i can post that comment and i'm done and i can actually click out of here or tap out of there and go back to the cloud folder now this is back in adobe it's not where i care about to be but if i go back to files you can see it's actually updating and now it's updated so now this file on icloud has been updated from my changes that i made on the ipad so now what i can do from this is i can then go back to zotero and pull in my annotations so now back in zotero i can then look at zotero and say okay we have tablet files we have tablet files that have been modified but this file is still here if we look at the tag you can see it now says underscore tablet underscore modified which then if we actually go to the tablet files modified folder we can see this pdf in there and interesting okay so if we open the pdf interesting there's nothing on here though that's weird so let's actually right click and we're going to get from tablet and what this is going to do is that once the file is updated it's going to pull the file from the tablet back into your zotero database and because we have that option checked for extracting annotations it's going to extract those annotations into the actual collected item in your zotero database so let's do that now you can see it's got some annotations here some little pop-ups going on check mark we're good there annotations got that and now there's nothing in the tablet file saved searches because it's not on the tablet anymore it's not in the folder on your icloud or cloud service provider instance if i go to zotero pdfs there is nothing in here okay so it's been pulled back in if i go to that item now and i open it up there is now some extracted annotations now you notice that when i open the pdf it didn't show those annotations i'm not sure if that's a bug or if i would just need to restart zotero but ultimately it works still i can open up the pdf my annotations and highlight are here and i can now look at my extracted annotations excellent and with md notes that md notes add in from the zotero workflow video i can now extract these to mark down and put them into my obsidian vault as literature notes from this research paper that is the entire workflow very simple very easy and very easy to manage and maintain so hopefully you found this video interesting let me know what sort of tools or other workflows that you use with pdfs zotero tablets and how you do any sort of mobile editing on your research papers documents and etc i'd be really interested in hearing about how you apply this leave a comment in the comment section below and let me know how how you use something like this and or if you're going to use this workflow let me know how well it works for you and any pain points you might have with it and a quick note before i go thank you to the patrons who support this channel rito leonardo justin brandon klaus pippa alberto clark joel john john and paul thank you all for donating and supporting this channel through patreon if you like the support channel uh there's a variety of ways depending on whatever you feel comfortable with and feel like doing there's one time donations through buy me a coffee paypal there's recurring donations through patreon or my preferred method github sponsors that doesn't take any sort of fees or cut and just watching the videos anything helps it's all appreciated nothing's required and i appreciate everybody who does support this channel so with that i will see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Bryan Jenks

Views: 10,041

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: bryan jenks, macbook pro 16, new macbook pro, macbook pro, catalina, obsidian, obsidian.md, pkm, basb, personal knowledge management, build a second brain, research, note taking app, note taking, zettelkasten, obsidian workflow, obsidian zettelkasten workflow, evergreen notes, zotero, obsidian zotero workflow, zotero obsidian workflow, mdnotes, zotfile, zotfile tutorial, zotero plain text notes, zotero ipad, zotero ipad workflow, obsidian ipad workflow, obsidian ipad

Id: e7novaC_O_Y

Length: 15min 53sec (953 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 18 2021