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I use LaTeX on multiple computers. To avoid having different versions of my bibliography files floating around, I keep all of my .bib files in a Dropbox folder, instead of in local texmf folders.

One of the computers runs Ubuntu, and on that computer, I use TeXWorks. In the "Paths for TeX and related programs", I added the path to the folder that contains my BibTeX files: /home/.../Dropbox/Bibliographies/. However, BibTeX still can't find my .bib files.

Here is an example:

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}
We refer to the work of Ulam~\cite{Ulam}.

\bibliographystyle{plain}
\bibliography{mybib}
\end{document}

And here is the error message:

This is BibTeX, Version 0.99c (TeX Live 2009/Debian)
The top-level auxiliary file: bibtexpath.aux
The style file: plain.bst
I couldn't open database file mybib.bib
---line 4 of file bibtexpath.aux
 : \bibdata{mybib
 :               }
I'm skipping whatever remains of this command
I found no database files---while reading file bibtexpath.aux
Warning--I didn't find a database entry for "Ulam"
(There were 2 error messages)

Edit: This question was closed a while ago. However, I don't understand how to apply the answers to the supposed duplicate to my situation. In particular, while the accepted answer there talks about putting a .bib file in the $LOCALTEXMF hierarchy of a particular system, I would like to keep mine in a Dropbox folder. In that case, the correct path name will vary depending on which machine I'm using.

Andrew Uzzell
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    As far as I can see this is not related to texworks but to TeX's path indexing. Therefore, if you add the dropbox folder to texwork's config, texworks will see it and be able to extract cite keys from it. But once you call bibtex to get your references compiled, bibtex doesn't know of the paths configured in texworks but only for the paths that your TeX distribution is configured to search. – Benedikt Bauer Oct 17 '12 at 10:01
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    I think the paths in TeXworks are for the executables. You can set the environment variable BIBINPUTS=$BIBINPUTS:.:/home/.../Dropbox/Bibliographies/ – Guido Oct 17 '12 at 10:11
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    You could make your dropbox directory part of your local texmf. But I never would put privat files on a internet medium for data security ... – Mensch Oct 17 '12 at 12:13
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    It should be possible to add the Dropbox directory structure to your TEXMF configuration file texmf.cnf. – Speravir Mar 30 '14 at 03:54

0 Answers0