Citekeys in different collections

[professionalAnxious5]

Hello,
sorry if this is a very bacis q. I am new to this.
Why do pinned citekeys not sync across different collections?
I create unique citkeys for every entry in my library and use these entries in different collections, shared and not shared. But the Citekey is not syncing (after refreshing) which I do not understand, because I thought this is the idea of a pinned citekey. Maybe I did not understand this right. My goal is to set a fixed citekey once for one entry.
Thank you in advance

[retorquere]

Why do pinned citekeys not sync across different collections?

If they are pinned, they will sync (I take it you mean libraries/groups? sync isn't really terminology that applies to collections).

I create unique citkeys for every entry in my library and use these entries in different collections, shared and not shared. But the Citekey is not syncing (after refreshing) which I do not understand, because I thought this is the idea of a pinned citekey.

But are they in fact pinned? Do they appear in the extra field? If not, they are not pinned.

[professionalAnxious5]

Thank you!
Yes, they are pinned, they appear in the extra field. Collections are just sub-categories of libraries, sorry for the terminology, I use Zotero in German.
Does is matter where I change the citekey? But actually it does not matter, when I change the citekey in my main library it does not sync in the group library and vice versa.

[retorquere]

Do you mean that

1. they are present in the extra field on one side, they do sync to the other side to the extra field, but they are not used as citekeys on the other side, or
2. they are present in the extra field on one side, but they do not sync to the other side to the extra field (and are for that reason not used as the citekey)

Because 2. would be a problem with Zotero sync, not with BBT. 1. would be a BBT problem, and then you need to open an issue instead of a discussion.

It does not matter where you make the change. What is in the extra field must always be the active citekey, regardless of how it got there.

[professionalAnxious5]

second.
Thank you for nailing this down. I will get in touch with Zotero.

[retorquere]

Any new items you create while BBT is not installed will get a key as soon as you start up with BBT installed. Pinned keys survive even if you delete the BBT database (not the Zotero database), because what is in the extra field is always used as the citekey.

[professionalAnxious5]

does not sync either after I uninstalled BBT. did re-install it, did not fix in either.

[retorquere]

Thanks for testing that. That makes it unambiguously a Zotero sync problem.

[professionalAnxious5]

ok, Zotero support says, that items in different libraries are totally separated and can never sync/refresh. Then I got this wrong, becaus I thought the goal of a pinned citekey was to define it interlibrary and not to set it for each new library again.

[retorquere]

Oh you mean between different libraries/groups. Yeah that's not how Zotero works. There isn't even a concept of "same item" between libraries.