Due to a libary crash and a misguided effort to merge two libraries, i now have 100s of orphan pdf files in the data files that are not connected to a reference. Duplicate pdfs with different names exist and are conected to appropriate references.
Is there anyway to purge the libary of extraneous files?
I tried the compressed library export and re-imported it but sadly, that just compressed the whole data folder and not just those pdfs linked to a reference. I have tried deleting the unlinked pdfs but that somehow corrupted my library (luckily backed up first!!
Getting rid of unused PDFs in a library’s data folder can be a bit tricky. I would actually recommend copying into a new library to carry over ONLY the references and attachments that are currently “live”.
Open your library.
Use File>New to make a new, blank library.
Click Window>Tile Horizontally so you can see both libraries at once.
Highlight all the references in your original library by using Ctrl-A (Command-A on the Mac) and drag them into the library window of the new library. All the references and their associated PDFs will be copied into the new library.
A few notes about this:
This will carry over all the reference information and their associated PDFs. It will NOT copy over groups. Any groups would have to be remade in the new library.
As the record numbers will be different in the new library, please click Update Citations and Bibliography with the new library open in any documents that you work with that had citations inserted from the old library.
If like me, your old paper copies of references use the Record number as a part of the filing system, in X7 you can copy the record number to an unused field first, before creating the new library. I also add a mnemonic to the front of this field (edit/move/copy) in a second step to know which library this number came from.
In X7 using this new library with an existing document should not invoke the search during an update for the new record number, but sometimes I find it still does…