Make Mendeley Desktop portable (for USB Drive)
It would be great if Mendeley Desktop could be a portable application that can be run from a USB hard drive or stick.
AdminMendeley
(Admin, Mendeley)
shared this idea
A version of Mendeley Desktop for Windows which can be installed on shared computers without admin rights is available from http://s3.amazonaws.com/com.mendeley.download/Mendeley-Desktop-1.5.1-win32-NonAdmin.exe
This is not a full ‘portable’ version that stores everything on a USB pen, but it may help some users.
105 comments
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Chris Rust
commented
Very important for me as I cannot install software on my University office computer so I use portable apps for almost everything. It's great having everything with me and using it on any computer available.
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Frederico
commented
Realmente seria ótimo uma versão portable, uma vez que hoje em dia é muito comum se utilizar vários PCs, sem contar com a questão das restrições.
It really would be great portable version, because is very common
use multiple PCs, without taking the issue of restrictions -
Stuart Simon commented
Against my better judgment, I actually downloaded Mendeley Desktop to my computer today. I was surprised to find that the "official" Windows version installs into the My Documents folder and does not change the registry. In other words, the only Windows versions of Mendeley now available for download are already portable.
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Scott
commented
Yeah! Curious, ETA?
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Roberto Landaeta
commented
Will the portable version include the Word plugin?
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Sinan
commented
Nice
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Lee
commented
Any news about the portable version of Mendeley?
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Alex
commented
same problem here - i cannot use mendeley at work because of the system restrictions. Would be perfect to have an USB version.
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Christian
commented
This is really important. Not supporting a portable solution might be a reason to stop using Mendeley soon. I can't use it at work with their restrictions.
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Anonymous
commented
It is very good. I have 3 desktop. Modern USB drive have very good compacity. So i can store a library too.
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X. Gelabert
commented
Any advances with this issue so far? I really this this feature is important to keep synchronized local work/home pdfs.
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Carl Edlund Anderson
commented
I am not so sure that _running_ the application from a USB drive would be as useful as being able to store files on a USB drive, and access those files from instances of the desktop app running on different machines, different platforms, etc. What I really want to be able to do -- and what I suspect at least some others want to be able to do -- is access a fairly large collection of PDF files (larger than the free 500 MB) on different machines running different OSs.
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mike
commented
A good cross platform solution I've found is to use VMware. Download a virtual appliance, or create your own using a trial copy of vmware workstation. I used jeos ubuntu + gnome, I could have kept it smaller by using DSL or fluxbox instead of gnome, but I have the space handy.
You can then install mendeley onto the viritual machine, and keep the machine on your usb drive. You will need vmware player on each machine you work from, but that's free.Works for me, but I don't have to deal with large uni sysadmins!
Mendeley could pretty quickly offer a prepackaged vmware appliance that has just enough to run mendeleydesktop.
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Vjekoslav
commented
Sync between PCs is a feature that I'm missing most.
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Peter Mauer commented
Nice idea in general.
Would you like to give the option of password protection at the start (and encryption of data?) in case you're loosing your USB key?
Can it be done with the choice of either copying all your PDFs onto the USB device or only have the pure database? -
Nicolas Montalva
commented
Googling it a while I found this http://n30bli7z.blogspot.com/2009/10/using-mendeley-effectivey-on-multiple.html It is not exactly a way to make it portable, since you need install mendeley in each machine, but your links and database will be the same always.
Hope it works, any other solution is very welcome
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Nicolas Montalva
commented
I'm just discovered Mendeley and looks great.
I have been using zotero for almost a year, and after lots of problems with duplicate content, broken links, etc, between my computers, I started to use it from an external hard drive using firefox portable for windows running in Wine (then, I can also use it under Windows coputers), and works in all linux machines with a local installation of wine.I will try to do something similar with Mendeley, and I would be glad to receive any suggestion or idea about how to do it.
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Rhys commented
AND definitely make the portable USB version independent of the cloud, as this is where all my issues are... Although the google scholar lookup for details would be useful on the USB.
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Zen
commented
Sorry I can't be more helpful, but I'm still learning.
To save files or watch files, and use the active file abilities of the Desktop on your USB stick, the settings in "tools" on your Portable USB Desktop (as previously setup) need to be pointed to the USB drive and file location where you save your PDFs.As far as I can tell, each time you run your USB stick Mendeley on a different computer, the First thing you need to do after you open the desktop from the USB stick, is to Change the settings for your Save to and Watch files. That's because different computers have different drive letters, and each time you'll have to find the correct letter that identifies your USB stick and the PDF files on it, and save that to the open Mendeley Desktop settings for the session. It might be an annoyance, but I can live with that..
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Zen
commented
To get Mendeley to work with importing links via the browser using a USB stick, I downloaded and installed the latest Firefox Portable edition from Portableapps.com. After setting up my USB based Firefox, I opened that, and then went to the Mendeley site using my portable Firefox browser - from there I downloaded the Weblink to the portable Firefox browser - voila!
I also changed the settings to keep a file of my PDFs on the USB stick in the "Mendeley" folder I had previously created, as well as increasing the cache size for the Portable Firefox to 150MB so that pages load faster - (Tends to be slow, especially initially on startup from the USB stick). I did all the installing and setup on my home computer so that I wouldn't be inadvertantly be installing anything on the School computers.
I make sure I save and initiate everything from the USB stick - so far it seems to be working!
