Mastering Zotero - Unit 2, Module 5: Working with PDF annotations on tablets

this is the fifth and final module in our unit of reading and annotating content in zotero and it's optional the content here is tailored for people who want to keep their notes and highlights from pdf files as part of the zotero collection but who also like to use tablets such as ipads for reading and annotating articles and book chapters this is an advanced feature of the zot file plugin and it can help take your work to the next level this module assumes you already have zot file installed if you don't information on how to get it is in the previous module to follow along in this module you need to have zotero installed on your computer you can get the software at zotero.org and for more information on the basics of using zotero see our online guide or check out the mastering zotero guide on github this module also uses examples from a sample zotero library you can use your own zotero library to try out the features i cover but i've also made the sample items for this course available for you to import into your own zotero library that way you can see exactly what i see and follow along click by click to learn how to get and import these sample items see the course setup module and come back to this one when you're ready here's a quick overview of how this all works it feels just a little bit like magic once it's all set up first you send a pdf file from zotero to your tablet then you use your tablet and your favorite pdf annotation software to read and annotate the article or item when you're done you send the pdf file back from your tablet to zotero and all of your notes and annotations will be extracted into zotero notes i really like this feature because i find reading and annotating on a tablet to be more focused and more portable than sitting at a computer or lugging my laptop around it's a really nice feature for times when i really want to do some focused reading sound cool let's get started this module covers setting up zot file to support your tablet moving pdf files from zotero to your tablet and then of course getting your pdf files back from your tablet and extracting the annotations i'm assuming here that you've already seen the previous module which covers how to download and install zot file and of course i'm assuming that you have a tablet that you can use to view and annotate your pdfs there are two things you need in order to make this all work the first thing is a place to share your files between your tablet and your computer the second thing of course is software on your tablet that you can use to annotate pdfs let's talk about software for your tablet first the obvious choice is adobe acrobat reader since it's free and available on all platforms but i know it's not everybody's favorite if you don't want to use it there are other options for android devices i recommend apps like pdf element or zodo for ipads i recommend pdf expert and liquid text basically though you can use any pdf viewer that supports annotations and highlighting and that allows you to open files from an online location such as google drive onedrive or dropbox the other thing that we need is an online or shared location for our files this is how we'll get pdf files from your desktop or laptop onto your tablet or ipad think of this location as a shipping box for your pdfs you put zotero files into the box and then use your tablet to open the files that are in the box then when you're done working with them zotero uses the shipping box location to put the annotated pdf files back into your zotero library there are many options you can use for the purpose of transferring files between zotero and your tablet onedrive google drive apple's icloud and dropbox are all popular and you can create an account on those platforms for free the critical feature for any service that you choose is that you have to be able to access the files directly from your computer and from your tablet all of the options i just mentioned will let you do this now just remember that putting files online can expose them in case of a hack or a data breach so be careful if the pdf files you have contain sensitive or confidential information for now i'm assumed that you're working with non-sensitive items such as journal articles and we'll be using google drive for our example so for this example we need google drive installed on our desktop and on our tablet so it can be accessed from both sides i have the application installed on my laptop by the way they call the app backup and sync on desktops now but the mobile version for phones and tablets is still called google drive and here you can see i also have the app installed on my ipad i've logged into my google account in both apps both locations and this lets me see my online files from both devices now why do we need this well we want google drive to be our shipping box zotero will need to be able to put files into the google drive box so that the tablet can get them and the pdf reader on your tablet will have to have access to google drive so it can read and save the files that you're annotating so to keep things clean and simple in case we want to use google drive for other things i've created a folder on my google drive called zot file and i'm going to use this as the place to send files back and forth now creating a separate folder for it just means that all the files are kept together and they don't get mixed up with any other things that i might have on google drive so now that we have our file transfer location set up we need to configure zotero and the zot file add-on to use it to do this go to tools zot file preferences and select the tablet settings tab enable the use zot file to send and get files from tablet option you'll get a message about a saved search to keep track of your tablet files that's good so just click ok next we have to configure the most important setting the base folder that we'll use as our file transfer location so here i'll select choose and then navigate to my google drive location remember i created a subfolder called zot file earlier as a location for this so i'm going to select that now if zot file can successfully access this location you'll see a green check mark if not check your settings and try again now you can choose if you want pdf stored directly in this folder or if you'd like zot file to create sub folders for you for your sub collections this is a personal preference and i just leave mine at the default finally let's make sure that we have these two options set at the bottom rename files when they are sent to the tablet and automatically extract annotations when getting pdfs back from tablet this automation part was going to save us a little bit of work so now that these options are set we can close the preferences and we're ready to try it so let's try sending a file to our tablet so we can work with it now in my collection here i've identified an article that i want to read and annotate on my tablet this is the article by houston and houston in the literature review collection for my mrp to set it up for my tablet i simply select the item right click and select manage attachments send to tablet i'm working with one article here but you can actually select more than one item at a time if you want to send a bunch of files at once now when i make this selection in the menu two things happen first and this is the more obvious of the two i'll get a little pop-up window in zotero at the bottom telling me that the item is being sent to my tablet the second thing that happens is that zotero adds a tag to my item so by default this tag is underscore tablet but you can change this in your zop file settings if you want the important thing is that you do not want to edit or remove this tag because it will mess things up in this zot file pdf workflow zot file uses this tag to keep track of which files you want to read and annotate on your device so don't mess with it if you added the saved search for tablet files on the tablet you'll now see that your item is listed there now i can go to my tablet i'm using an ipad and the free adobe acrobat reader app in this app i use the files button at the bottom to choose a file i want to open i'll tap the google drive location on the left you might be asked to log into google if you haven't done that already i can access my zot files folder and in there i will find the pdf that i chose in zotero so just tap to open it now in acrobat reader i use the pencil icon in the lower right to indicate that i want to highlight and add comments so let's highlight a sentence here tap the highlight hold down and drag to highlight an area and add a comment to the article by tapping the dialog button tapping where we want the comment to appear and then entering some text some apps let you do handwriting make doodles and other things to pdfs it's important to remember though that zotero is perfectly fine with anything you do to the pdf files but only the highlighted text and comments could be imported back into zotero as notes all right i've done uh some annotations so i'll tap done here this will save the file in google drive and you can see now that if i reopen it my highlights and comments are still there so let's go back to zotero on my laptop and watch the magic so now that i'm back in zotero i want to get my pdf files back from my tablet if i added the saved search for tablet files i can go right to that folder in zotero and find the file that i want to retrieve otherwise i can go back to the collection where i got the file from and locate the item there i find it easier to use the tablet files folder now to bring the attachment back into zotero just right click and go to manage attachments get from tablet you'll see a pop-up showing that zotero is retrieving the file and zotero should automatically extract all your highlights and comments and place them in a note but i have found that once in a while the automatic method doesn't work but it's not a problem i can always do the extraction manually by right-clicking on the item navigating to manage attachments and selecting extract annotations and there we go we have a new note and in it we see our highlighted text and our comments with links to them in the original pdf files you'll also notice that that tablet tag has been removed from the item now that it's been retrieved and if you have the saved search for tablet files enabled you'll see that the entry has been removed from there as well that's the workflow you can send items to and from your tablet anytime if you send a file to your tablet but never actually use your tablet to open and annotate it it's not a problem you could just get the files back from your tablet even if they're not changed there are just two things you need to remember when using this method for annotating your files the first thing is something that i've already mentioned do not delete or edit the underscore tablet tag that zot file uses to keep track of things it's really critical to how the whole tool works secondly it's important to know that when you send a file to your tablet zot file doesn't move the file from zotero into your google drive it actually makes a copy so what that means is that there's going to be one version in zotero as an attachment and one version in your shared file location in google drive in this case which your tablet can access let me show you an example and why this matters i'll choose an item here and i'll send it to my tablet now if i open google drive and look in the zot file folder you can see the pdf file is there but if i go back to zotero i can also select the pdf attachment right click and select show file what this does is opens the folder where this file is located on my computer now when these two windows are side by side you can see that these are two different files in two different locations there's a copy of the file in zotero's internal storage system you can see it's a weird long folder path that i normally don't worry about but when i sent the file to my tablet it created a copy in the google drive folder so what this means is that it's possible that i could open the file from zotero or from my tablet but each file is different because there are two copies now most of the time this won't affect you but it does mean that you have to be careful about doing your reading and annotation in the spot where you planned on doing it if you read the article on your tablet and then you don't get it back from your tablet and open it in zotero and make annotations you can actually cancel them all out or overwrite them so to prevent problems if an item is marked as being on your tablet only open it on your tablet if you do want to stop annotating or reading a pdf on your tablet and switch to doing it from zotero or your computer instead get the file back from your tablet first and then proceed with your work there you have it that's how to integrate zotero into your reading and annotation workflow using zot file we covered how to set up zot files so you can use your tablet or ipad to read and annotate pdf files showed you the workflow for getting files to and from your tablet and the hopefully automatic extraction of annotations into zotero notes this brings us to the end of unit 2. in unit 3 i'll be talking about how you can go even further with zotero using it to manage your research workflow and keep track of your search strategies see you there [Music]

Channel: Teaching & Learning at York U. Libraries

Views: 1,264

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Keywords: Zotero, York University, research tools, Zotfile

Id: VwR2dr4CVbk

Length: 13min 33sec (813 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 11 2021