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• Alexandru Tudor Constantinescu commented  ·  Jan 30, 2012  ·  Flag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  @marco and others having problems with migration (NOT syncing over the day)
  I had the same problem and got a pretty much boilerplate answer from Mendeley. [ok, they don't charge you for using Mendeley, so I shouldn't complain too much]

  Here's an excerpt from the answer I gave to the Support after finding a way to migrate the database AND the PDFs.

  The easy way: sync your whole library with the server, INCLUDING the PDFs. Move to the new computer and sync again.
  Drawbacks:
  (a) if you exceed the storing quota you're out of luck
  (b) the documents will be downloaded in some special Mendeley folder, not your beloved location
  (c) if you are fiddly about file namings, your old file names will be replaced by Mendeley's default naming algorithm, which yields SomeReallyLongAndUglyFileNames.pdf.

  The hard way:
  1. locate and move the database file as per the "How can I migrate my data from one PC to another?" and "How do I locate Mendeley Desktop database files on my computer?" documents (search in the FAQ)
  2. download the SQLite Database browser from http://sourceforge.net/projects/sqlitebrowser/ Works out of the box, no install needed.
  3. Make sure Mendeley is closed and make a backup of the database file.
  4. With Mendeley still closed, open the database file in the SQLite Database browser and issue a command along the lines of:

  update Files
  set localUrl='file:///C:/Users/Alexandru/Documents/Work/Sci/Papers' || substr(localUrl,77)
  where localURL like
  'file:///C:/Dokumente%20und%20Einstellungen/Alex/Eigene%20Dateien/Work/Papers%'

  For humans: update the Files table by changing the value of localUrl as follows: prepend (put before) the characters "77 to the end of localURL" with the text file:///C:/Users.. in the rows having a localURL starting with file:///C:/Dokumente...). Take care to replace 77 with whatever your path length is and note that there are forward and not backslashes even on a Windows system. The %20 are replacements for spaces and the last % sign means "and a bunch of other characters following".

  5. Verify that the changes made are what you wanted. Save and exit. Start Mendeley. Get a beer and enjoy!

  Hope this helps a bit, worked for me like a charm (after 2 hours of fiddling around).

  *********************
  *** Disclaimer ***
  *********************
  I don't know whether the % signs in the middle of the LIKE string do affect the LIKE statement or not.

• marco commented  ·  Jan 16, 2012  ·  Flag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  oh yes - this is a MUST! I am just dealing with nearly 400 broken links due to reinstallation of one of my pc's. I am using syncronizing with SugarSync, however, for each paper added on one machine, I need to reattach the file (that is synced among all my pc's) in Mendeley. This is annoying but still manageable. However, reattaching 400 files would be a real pain!! Anyone any suggestion on how to achieve that? Just read the backup function is not intended for that, and I don't want to take the risk loosing the whole database or all file links on my other pc's as well... Solutions are heavily appreciated! Thanks!

• Anonymous commented  ·  Dec 12, 2011  ·  Flag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  I just wanted to shift to Mendeley, because it's in general such a great product. However, for me it is clearly crucial to be able to have my files synced through dropbox (among others, because I tend to mark in my pdfs with "non-note" text writings, drawings etc., which seems not to be handled well in Mendeley). But now, as there seems to be no option at all that Mendeley allows full dropbox-synchronization, with direct pdf access from Mendeley itself, I will have to go for Jabref I guess... :-( a real pity; nedless to say I'd have been willing to pay something even just to have it work in any way...

• Piet Hausberg commented  ·  Dec 07, 2011  ·  Flag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  A MUST!!!

• Anonymous commented  ·  Nov 21, 2011  ·  Flag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  This functionallity would be really useful. It is really a pain to download some papers in one machine and then have broken links in the other machine (even if you have synchronized the folders). Also it should not be very difficult to implement, since Mendeley already has this "watch folder". It should be something like "watch folder, but looking to the user's library". Hope it gets done!

• Frank commented  ·  Nov 14, 2011  ·  Flag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  Somewhere further down this thread there is a suggestion that the issue is selling hosted cloud space. I don't mind buying space to hold pdfs elsewhere (although it raises copyright issues) but I certainly hope that it is not the reason we don't have a solution to the "own folders" (and different computers) issue. Needs fixing.

• claudio commented  ·  Nov 13, 2011  ·  Flag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  I would also give my 10 votes for this... Is making my life miserable to use an unreliable web based drive for storing all the data (using 4 different computers), it would be much easier to have a synchd folder in each computer.

• mae3355 commented  ·  Oct 22, 2011  ·  Flag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  Not sure if this is a related issue. Half the time when I drag pdfs into other folders on Mendeley to have them in both folders, when I come back in there's just a broken link and I have to go download the article again on Pubmed. Please fix this! It's incredibly annoying!

• Christopher commented  ·  Oct 19, 2011  ·  Flag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  If I could spend all 10 of my votes on this, I would. I'm not even necessarily interested in syncing between computers (which would be nice, but...) - I just want Mendeley to handle my pdf directory getting moved. Now all my file links are broken and I'm going to have to patch together a solution to find them again. Gah! Little (simple!) things like this keep Mendeley as a good product but not a great product.

• khamael commented  ·  Oct 11, 2011  ·  Flag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  Hmm, if your publications have a pdf associated with it, you can just tell mendeley to synchronize attached files. And they are kept in their storage. Of course, then the personal space of 500MB (for we freeloaders) goes fast.
  Hmm and if you have both mendeley clients (in both machines) set to organize files in a folder (your dropbox) and also to have it watching it? The relative paths problem exist like this?

• Carl Anderson commented  ·  Sep 01, 2011  ·  Flag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  Alas, although I encourage my colleagues and students to use Mendeley, I am very far from the ears of those with the purse strings. I would actually suggest that Mendeley's salespeople be out there knocking on institutional doors. That might offer more opportunity for success than lone individuals within institutions asking administrators, "Hey, please spend a pile of money on this thing you have never heard of and don't understand in any case!". ;)

• Adminrobert.knight (Admin, Mendeley) commented  ·  Sep 01, 2011  ·  Flag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  Hello LE,

  Please read some of my earlier comments. Hopefully we will be able to accommodate people who have to or want to store content elsewhere in future, though I do not know quite how that will work yet. I'm afraid you'll have to bear with us for a while.

  Hello Carl,

  We can do subscriptions for groups and institutions - contact business@mendeley.com if you are interested.

• fhocutt commented  ·  Aug 31, 2011  ·  Flag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  I would use this. I am rapidly running out of free webspace, but I really like the application and would like to be able to use it both on my mac at home and the PC in lab.

• Carl Anderson commented  ·  Aug 23, 2011  ·  Flag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  I'm likewise dubious about Mendeley's aspirations to sell cloud storage on an _individual_ basis; possibly it would be more plausible to convince _institutions_ to shell out for group subscriptions? OK, institutions are all cash-strapped -- but then so are their members, who may think more than twice about shelling out their own money for what is, essentially, a work-related tool. (Yeah, everyone brings their work home -- but they may not want to _pay_ to bring their work home! Or at the very least, they may want someone else to pay.) In any case, I wonder at the wisdom of a strategy that seeks to convince individual users to pay what is (at the end of the day) considerably more than cloud storage currently costs under many other consumer models.

• radiomeat commented  ·  Aug 23, 2011  ·  Flag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  Agreed, LE. I think there's a problem with the MMM (the Mendeley Monetization Model) -- how about tiered accounts -- users pay less but keep their info on Mendeley servers, or pay more and retain control. Cue the Stones: Hey, you, get off of my cloud....!

• LE commented  ·  Aug 23, 2011  ·  Flag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  This is ridiculous. Between this topic and "Allow file storage on any server" there are 2546 votes, which would make it number 3 on the list and yet there's no response at all. Clearly people want to use dropbox and/or sugarsync with this product but they clearly refuse to do that. I understand they plan on making money on storage, but if you already pay for cloud storage (multipurpose and cheaper) why pay for expensive pdf-only storage? Maybe have two paid versions, a monthly subscription-based that doesn't allow relative paths and a one-time paid version that does, and a free version that has neither. I would gladly pay a one-time fee to be able to use this on multiple machines. I will gladly pay someone else if Mendeley doesn't care about what their user base wants.

• supahsushi commented  ·  Aug 05, 2011  ·  Flag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  I just want to share my workaround.

  My situation: I use 2 windows computers at home and work. I wanted to use Mendeley on both, but had a problem with accessing the indexed PDF files. Sure, I had the same lists or bibliographies of my added sources in Mendeley on both computers because of their online sync feature. But, I was only able to open PDFs on the computer where I added them. I wanted to do it on both computers since I was looking to use Mendeley to read and annotate my sources, not just organize them. I cannot resort to syncing the actual files online because 500 mb is just not enough for my whole collection and internet speeds can be quite slow or unreliable. I thought it was better to store it on a portable HD instead.

  What I used: portable hard drive, Allway Sync
  I have Windows 7 on both computers.

  What I did:

  1. In my home computer, I copied the folder "Mendeley" from
  C:\Program Files
  to my portable hard drive so I sorta have a portable version I can always carry around.
  1.A) Deleted the Mendeley folder in Program files.
  1.B) Opened Mendeley in my portable HD. No probs so far.
  1.C) Added some PDFS in Mendeley as samples.
  1.D) I had the setting "Organize my files" in Mendeley turned on, and the the copying of files was set to my portable HD as well.

  2) I copied the "Mendeley Ltd" folder from
  C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\
  to my portable HD.

  3) Using Allway Sync, I set up a job to sync
  the "Mendeley Ltd" folder in my home computer (C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Mendeley Ltd)
  and
  the "Mendeley Ltd" folder in my portable HD.
  (X:\AppData\Local\Mendeley Ltd)

  4) Then synced.

  5) In my work computer, I plugged my portable HD also did Steps 3 and 4.

  6) Still on my work computer, I opened Mendeley from my portable HD. Voila! My added PDFs in my home computer was also there and I can access/open them in Mendeley.
  6.A) I also turned "Organize my files" on, and the copying of files set to my portable HD, same path/folder I used on my home computer.

  7) After using Mendeley, I synced the "Mendeley Ltd" folder again to save the changes to my portable HD.

  8) ALWAYS sync the "Mendeley Ltd" folders on the computer you are using and portbale HD first before and after opening Mendeley to save the changes you made to your portable HD and and be able to carry this over to the other computer.

  Some notes:
  - I always sync my library online for my annotations. So far successful, when I open the PDFs on both computers the annotations have the same notes/highlights.
  - I set the drive letter of my portable HD to "X" on both computers to save me the hassle of changing drive or volume letters when I sync files.
  - the downside might be you will be dependent on your portable HD for Mendeley. also, it is kind of a hassle to sync everytime. Woe when you forget!

  And that's it. Yeah, it's really an awkward and clunky way but it meets my needs ^_^ figured this out just now, and now I'm off to organize my library further. I hope this will also work out for you! If there are any problems, please share them here. I don't know if this is really right way to do it ^^ The other workarounds I've seen here and elsewhere (like this: http://n30bli7z.blogspot.com/2009/10/using-mendeley-effectivey-on-multiple.html) were just way over my head with sqlite and sourceforge stuff, etc. -_-; I'm such a n00b. I didn't give up on Mendeley because I really wanted a solution for my research needs, for organizing my resources and consuming them, to be able focus on analyzing things and writing. Thanks everyone, really hope this helps. :)

• Javier Rodriguez commented  ·  Aug 03, 2011  ·  Flag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  Totally agree!

• Nilton Ferreira Junior commented  ·  Aug 01, 2011  ·  Flag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  Muito Bom os artigos , parabéns
  "Studant Brazillian"

• jesse commented  ·  Jul 31, 2011  ·  Flag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  oh, I thought there might be such such functions for desktop.
  I have to go back to Jabref.