Zotero to Obsidian

When importing references from Zotero to Obsidian, I’m encountering some issues, particularly with annotations and images. While most of the data imports correctly, including metadata like titles, authors, and abstracts, the annotations I’ve made in Zotero and any images associated with the references often don’t come through as expected.

What works:
The core bibliographic information, such as titles, authors, publication dates, and abstracts, is imported without any problems.

The links back to the Zotero entries also seem to work fine, ensuring that I can easily trace back to the original source.

What doesn’t work:
Annotations I’ve added to PDFs in Zotero, such as highlights and notes, are not consistently imported into Obsidian. This is a significant issue for me because these annotations often contain critical insights that I want to include in my notes within Obsidian.

Similarly, images embedded in the references, whether in the form of figures or screenshots I’ve added to Zotero, do not appear in Obsidian after the import. This disrupts the visual aspect of my notes, which is crucial for certain types of content, such as charts or diagrams.

I’ve tried different export formats (e.g., Markdown, HTML) and different plugins or scripts meant to bridge Zotero and Obsidian, but these have not resolved the issue with annotations and images.

I also ensured that both Zotero and Obsidian are up to date, as well as any plugins involved in the process.

This is the template im using:

{% if title %}Tittel: “{{title}}”{% endif %}
Forfattere: {{authors}}{{directors}}
{% if publicationTitle %}Publisert: “{{publicationTitle}}”{% endif %}
{% if date %}Dato: {{date | format(“YYYY-MM-DD”)}}{% endif %}
citekey: {{citekey}}
Tagger: {{hashTags}}


{{title}}

Bibliografi : {{bibliography}}

Nettsidelink : {{url}}

Zotero link : {{pdfZoteroLink}}

Tagger : {{hashTags}}

[!abstract]+
« {{abstractNote}} »

{% for annotation in annotations -%}

[!Annotation|{{annotation.color}}]+
{%- if annotation.annotatedText -%}« {{annotation.annotatedText}} »({{annotation.page}}){% endif %}{% if annotation.imageRelativePath %}![[{{annotation.imageRelativePath}}]]{% endif %}{% if annotation.comment %}

{{annotation.comment}}{%- endif %}

{% endfor %}

Hi @Gundersen98,

I have some questions before I can help. First, can you clarify this part?

Do you mean that it randomly fails to import the annotations, or does it fail on specific items only? Are there any errors when this happens? Have you checked the Obsidian console?

Another important detail: Where do you annotate your PDFs? In Zotero or another PDF reader?


Can you clarify this?

Do you mean that there is nothing where you would expect the image, or is there an embed, but the linked image file is not found?

Can you share one of the notes where the images and annotations failed to show properly?


Can you explain which export formats you are referring to, and how they’re relevant to the question about importing data from Zotero to Obsidian?


Lastly, even though you say you’re on the latest versions, please specify which exact versions that is. Are you using Zotero 6 or 7? Which version of Better Bibtex and Zotero Integration?

1 Like

haven’t been using the plugin for a while and did just a few hours ago…

it took me a while to realize i kept hitting on Zotero Integration: Import Notes instead of my own more elaborate template…
…maybe you have more than one template and one of them is faulty in some way…?

…as for images not coming in…i had the same issue…a year ago…? …and i’m not sure what fixed it…maybe i fiddled with my tesseract paths a bit…?

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