Attach PDFs to metadata in Mendeley Desktop by drag & drop
Dragging a pdf to a reference already in Mendeley should attach the pdf to that reference, instead of creating a duplicate of the reference. The process of opening the reference and browsing for it, is way too long. As checking if the reference already exist could be complicated (you judge that), just link it to whatever reference we point on when dragging.
AdminMendeley
(Admin, Mendeley)
shared this idea
This is currently on our roadmap for Mendeley Desktop 1.10. Expected release date is the start of August.
Our current solution is that dragging files into the details pane will attach a file to the existing reference, while dragging into the table view or left hand pane will create a new reference. There will be a consistent UI placement at the bottom of the details pane that will make this obvious to new users, while also acting as an easy way to open the PDF reader, or save new references to your library.
53 comments
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Michael Ranftelhuber
commented
"You can attach a PDF file via the Files heading in the reference’s Details tab in Mendeley Desktop. It is not possible to attach PDF files to references in the online library. Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause you."
As suggested before - this also works for me!
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Steve Dennis
commented
Sorry for the ambiguity. Yes, this is the solution currently being implemented into Mendeley Desktop 1.10.
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Jonathan Gelbord
commented
"Our current solution is that dragging files into the details pane will attach a file to the existing reference, while dragging into the table view or left hand pane will create a new reference."
By "current solution", do you mean the solution you currently plan to implement in Mendeley Desktop 1.10 or something that should work with the current software?
As a plan, this sounds good.
If this is supposed to work in the current version, then perhaps the behavior is broken, at least on some platforms. On my laptop (running Mendeley Desktop 1.8.4 and Mac OS X 10.6.8), I cannot drag and drop a PDF into the details pane. When I attempt to do so, a circle with a slash through it appears next to my cursor telling me this action is not allowed. I can drop the PDF into the table view, at which point Mendeley Desktop will either assign it to an existing entry or create a new one, depending upon whether a match is found. This is well and good in principle, but sometimes a desired match is not found. While this can be fixed manually, a drag-and-drop way of assigning a PDF would be a much simpler solution.
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Jacques Raubenheimer
commented
I agree with the implementation suggestion that says that when the PDF is dragged and dropped into the library, it gets imported with a new entry created from the extracted metadata, and then when it is dropped onto an existing document, it gets assigned as a file to that existing document. But perhaps, to avoid confusion, when the latter occurs, a messagebox should ask the user whether they want to associate the file with the document in question or import the file and create a new document. This will prevent confusion amongst current users who are accustomed to the import functioning.
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Jonathan Gelbord
commented
Add me to the folks requesting this.
One possible implementation: drag a PDF into the library of Mendeley Desktop and a new library entry is created from the extracted metadata, drag the PDF instead to the details of a selected paper and it gets assigned to that paper directly.
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Dan
commented
Ideally, this should support batch mode. (Imagine I have a local folder of pdf files and a Mendeley sync'ed library without pdfs). Currently, even if the local folder filenames are generated by Mendeley before (e.g., on a different machine without pdf sync enabled), Mendeley cannot link the library entries to the local PDFs.
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Carsten Lemmen commented
@mendeley Are you still looking into this? Or are you just busy polishing for retina interface instead of crucial functionality?
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Graham Poulter commented
Ok found a way: "You can attach a PDF file via the Files heading in the reference’s Details tab in Mendeley Desktop. It is not possible to attach PDF files to references in the online library. Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause you."
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Jonathan
commented
Not working for me, in version 1.5.2 running on OSX 10.7.4. This feature would make my life a lot easier. I currently have a bunch of PDFs that aren't linked to citations, and manually selecting them through finder is very time consuming.
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Lani
commented
This was suggested more than three years ago by the Mendeley team itself but still not implemented. I think this is a very important functionality because if you spend a lot of time fixing the metadata then move your files the process of re-linking them is very very time consuming.
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Ulrich Baumann
commented
Not working for me either using Chrome. In Safari I can drop it but meta data are not read at all. This is much better in Bookends and Sente.
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Anonymous
commented
Not working for me in Chrome. This is a real bummer.
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Anonymous
commented
Uh... I just tried this as well in 1.3.1 PC.... and it didn't work.
I'm trying to add pdfs to metadata that I pulled in from CiteULike but its not attaching.
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André
commented
I just tested it (Linux, Mendeley 1.3.1) and it worked. I guess this task should be marked "completed" ?
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Chad Curtis
commented
I was just testing this on a couple examples: It works in 1.1.2 on OS X. Should this be updated as complete?
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Carl Edlund Anderson
commented
Oh, yes -- I'm glad to see this is planned. :) I look forward to its implementation.
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Anonymous
commented
Just stumbled upon this. It's really stupid that this is not incorporated.
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Anonymous
commented
This could be good, but I don't want to accidently attach PDF's to a reference when I drag into Mendeley
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Jason Luoma
commented
This would be really useful to me too! I hope this get implemented
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Jason Luoma
commented
This would be really useful to me too.
