dvanoni
Sync papers from entire library or unfiled items
It would be very useful if I could sync items from either "My Library" or "Unfiled Items" rather than a collection.
I organize my papers within Notion; I would prefer not to always have the Zotero desktop app open. When I save papers to zotero.org from the Chrome extension, they go to my library, without an option to choose a specific collection (and thus show up in unfiled items). It would be great if these unfiled papers could automatically show up in Notion. In other words, to sync a paper into Notion, I currently have to either use the Zotero desktop app (so papers can be added directly to a collection), or I have to manually move each paper into a collection on zotero.org. (I could be missing something; if there is some workaround here, please let me know.)
On a related note, in the Zotero desktop app, when i ctrl+click on the "My Library" or "Unfiled Items" labels on the left, there is a menu option to "Sync Items to Notion," but this doesn't seem to do anything for me.
Thanks for all your work on Notero, it's super useful!
Thanks for the feedback, @markellekelly! And thanks for sharing your workflow—I see what you're running in to.
Because Notero as it exists today is a plugin for the Zotero desktop app, it will always require the desktop app to be running in order to sync items to Notion. Zotero does have a web API, and I think there could be a path forward for a service to be built that handles syncing all server-side, but that's beyond the scope of the current Notero project.
That being said, it's definitely possible to update Notero so that it could automatically sync all items in your Zotero library without having to add them to a collection first. I've heard similar requests from other folks as well. A thought I've had is to introduce a new option in the Notero preferences to toggle between syncing specific collections (as it works today) or syncing the entire library. I know it's still not ideal, but would something like that help improve your workflow?
As for nothing happening when using the "Sync Items to Notion" menu item on the "My Library" and "Unfiled Items" entries, that is indeed a known bug. 😬 The extension points available in Zotero for that menu are a bit limited, so I wasn't able to get this to work for anything other than collections. There is a monkey-patch workaround that I've seen some other plugins use, but I haven't yet invested in trying to get that to work.
In the meantime, another approach you can use is to select all items in the "My Library" or "Unfiled Items" folders (e.g. using Ctrl+A) and then clicking the "Sync to Notion" menu item in the item context menu.
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/299357/221102893-b3072755-39a1-440b-9e64-1643af57cb16.mp4
Thanks for the quick reply! Yes, syncing the entire library (vs. a specific collection) would definitely make my workflow a little easier. (To be specific, I am envisioning: as I sporadically encounter papers I want to look at later, I save them to my library via the web server, i.e. without opening the desktop app. Then later, to review papers, I open the Zotero and Notion desktop apps, which automatically syncs the previously-saved papers to Notion.) Thanks also for your workaround, that helps too!