Make it a habit to save such files in a subfolder /new/ in your Zotero folder.
Someone gives you a bunch of PDFs to read or you download a paper somewhere without having the metadata handy. Use a separate folder for files to be ingested.Now you can find them and fix them whenever you have some time to kill. Make it a habit to tag such items (“needs metadata”) when you see them. missing page numbers or publisher), but you don’t have the time to fix it right away. Sometimes you know an item has incomplete metadata (e.g. Tag incomplete items to find them back and fix them later.Want to tag multiple items at once? Select them, make sure the tag selector is visible in the left pane, and drag them onto the tag you want to use. This gives you a dynamically updated overview of your latest additions, so that you can go back to them and do the categorization and tagging work when it suits you. Click Advanced search, select “Dated Added” > “is in the last” > X “days/months” and fill in the desired period then save the search. Often you add new items without worrying about tagging or putting them in collections. Keep track of recent additions using a saved search.
You can place it in a folder that is included in your regular backup schedule or put it on a portable drive so that your library always travels with you (tip: if you work a lot on shared computers, combine it with Firefox Portable, which you can even use without administrator rights). Go to Preferences > Advanced to customize the storage location. The default place for the Zotero database and attachments in right in your Firefox profile, which isn’t the easiest to locate whichever OS you are on.
For more info see pdf fulltext indexing in the Zotero documentation.
However, Zotero can automatically install it and enable fulltext indexing: simply go to Preferences > Search and click on the ‘Check for installer’ button. The option is turned off by default because it relies on an external open source program (pdf2txt) which is not distributed with Zotero. Zotero can index your PDF attachments and make them fully searchable, turning your library from a mere linked catalogue into a Google Books of sorts. The default output style can be specified under Preferences > Export the shortcut key can be customized under Shortcut keys. Sending a PDF to a colleague, or mentioning a reference somewhere? Quickly copy the citation by selecting the reference and pressing Ctrl+Shift+C (Cmd-Shift-C on the Mac), or simply drag it from Zotero onto any edit window (for example a new email).
editors, book title, year, publisher, place) and duplicate it (Right-click > Duplicate item).