File Management [Desktop]

The new desktop now has file management! Don't know what File Mangement is or how you can use it? Read on!

Accessing File Mangement:

To access the "File Mangement" menu just click on the Papers menu tab[Or icon for windows]. That should bring up the following menu.

Library Path:

This is the path of your library. You can type freely in this text box or click browse to select a folder on your computer. Whatever folder you choose is the location that your PDF's files will download to. By default, we will put the folder in your Documents directory in the "Papers Library" folder. If all you want to do is change where files are downloaded you can click save and you are all set.

Automatic organization:

Selecting this will enable all of the features below it. Keep this off if you just want the files to go into a folder. If you want more organization go ahead and enable this by clicking on the box and keep reading below.

Copy or Move:

When you import documents into Papers do you want the files to be moved or copied? If you don't know what to choose, consider the pros and cons below

• Copy files
  • Pros
    • Keep original files in place [great for using multiple reference managers at the same time].
    • Keep a local backup of files in place.
  • Cons
    • All files are duplicated doubling the size of your library
    • Cloud saves render any local backups unnecessary.
• Move files
  • Pros
    • All files are organized and won't clutter up your computer
    • Saves space by keeping only one copy on your computer
  • Cons
    • If you use another reference manager they will lose where those PDF's are stored and you may have to move them back manually

Folder organization:

Enable this feature to enable folder organization. This will put all of your PDFs in subfolders that can be easily transversed and keep your library organized. If you don't enable this everything will appear at the root directory that you have specified at the begging of this article. For instance, if I have five papers from nature and two are from 2015 and 3 are from 2017 my folder structure would look like this with the above options.:

• Nature
  • 2015
    • PDF1.pdf
    • PDF2.pdf
  • 2017
    • PDF3.pdf
    • PDF4.pdf
    • PDF5.pdf

File names:

Enable "File names" to have your PDFs get specific file names based on the metadata on the paper. If you don't enable this your files will get named based on what they were imported with. Having this enabled would look something like this:

2015.Bruce Banner.pdf

2017.Tony Stark.pdf

2019.Steve Rodgers.pdf

File name separator:

Finally, the file name separator feature will allow you to customize how your PDFs are named. So if we take our examples above and instead of "Dot" use "Hyphen" the names become:

2015-Bruce-Banner.pdf

2017-Tony-Stark.pdf

2019-Steve-Rodgers.pdf

There is no right or wrong answer for this choice so choose what looks best for you.

Saving and applying your choices:

Once you are done choosing all of your options you can hit Save to close the menu and all-new PDFs will follow the choices you selected. If you want all of your old PDFs to follow the same suit just hit the orange button that says reorganize library. This will take some time but it will take all of your PDFs and whip them up into the organization you specified. This can take some time depending on how many PDFs you have stored but you will be able to see the progress on the left-hand side to show you a percentage of your files that have been processed. If you don't want to save any of the changes you made just hit the close button and everything will go back to what the options were when you opened this file. As always if you have any questions give our support line an email.