Collections help you better organize your references. Collections are similar to file folders on your computer; however, in Zotero a reference can be in more than one collection at a time. For example, an article about Virginia Woolf could be filed in your "Women and Writing" collection, your "British Authors" collection, and your "Woolf" collection without having to make multiple copies. You can see your collection on the left side of your Zotero 7 Standalone or online.
You will find information Zotero has collected about your references on the right side of your library. Bibliographic information, like author, journal title, page number, publication year, etc. can be found in the 'Info' tab. By clicking on any field you can change the information or add to it. The only fields you cannot edit under 'Info' are 'Date Added' and 'Modified.'
If there is a PDF with an article citation, Zotero will often save the PDF automatically to the citation. If it does not save automatically, check your Zotero Preferences. To attach items in your Zotero library, you must change your Zotero settings.
You can also attach files and PDFs manually to citations.
If you have a collection of previously downloaded PDFs on your computer, Zotero can help you add citation information for them. To add PDFs to Zotero and find their metadata, use the following steps:
For more on how this process works, read on Zotero's retrieve metadata guide.