A preview of Mendeley Desktop 1.3 is available to test. You can download it here and see the release notes here.
This update makes it easier to open PDF files in Mendeley Desktop and also lays the groundwork for improved integration between Mendeley Desktop and the research catalog on Mendeley.com. Internally, we have been spring-cleaning the software to reduce memory usage and improve stability.
Among the changes in this release:
- You can now open PDF files directly in Mendeley from Windows Explorer / Finder / Nautilus (this also means that it is now possible to set Mendeley to be the default program to handle PDF files if you wish).
- In the Mac version, you can now drag and drop PDF files onto the Mendeley dock icon. You can also drag and drop links to PDF files from your browser onto the dock icon and Mendeley will download and open them.
- Memory usage when importing PDFs has been reduced and file downloads during sync will be faster for many users.
- Several problems running Mendeley on very recent Linux distributions (Ubuntu 11.10 and Fedora 16) were fixed. Under Fedora 16 you’ll need to use the –force-bundled-qt command-line argument in order for the software to run.
- A number of sync bugs relating to folders in groups have been resolved.
Known Issues:
- Mendeley does not automatically appear in the ‘Open With…’ list in Windows Explorer. It needs to be added manually. We will resolve this before the final release.
This release is backwards compatible with the previous 1.1 release.
Please leave any feedback related to the new release on the feedback forum. You can also tweet @mendeleysupport or email support@mendeley.com
Mendeley Blog 
hi, i tried this devel version ie 1.3-dev2 on windows 7. However, the pdf files do not open in mendeley as described in release notes. Upon setting a pdf file to open with mendeley desktop adn subsequently opening hte pdf file just starts mendeley (ie does not add the file and/or open the file). Is this a bug or do i need to do something else ? thanks.
Hello Henry,
Can you provide the full path to one of the PDF files that you are trying to open? Can you also check whether PDF files located in ‘My Documents’ open in Mendeley?
Can you also clarify how you specified Mendeley as the program to open the PDF file?
I just search new version announcements for the number “64” and don’t bother reading the rest. MS Word support is the only feature I need.
hi rob,
theres no problem in how I link the pdf to open in mendeley and you can easily recreate the problem on win 7 prof as it simply doesnt work just try it. if it works for you in any scenario then do let me know.
i have found a hack to move past the hurdle. its something todo with the way mendeleydesktop.exe handles the filename argument passed to it. to attend to it, i created a bat file to take %1 argument ie filename and strip of the quotes from the path and provide relative path instead for eg. instead of c:/”my dir”/file.pdf to ../../file.pdf and it works ok.
hope that helps.
here are a few other issues i noticed while trying it out. 1) syncing of files other than pdf is once only and subsequent changes do not get synced. that leaves diff group members different versions/copies (2) limit of file size getting synced to only 50MB. (3) also, pls remove auto pdf file information gathering until its ready for prime time or allow users to turn it off. as your probably aware its error prone and frustrating in many ways.
best wishes and thanks it was fun trying. i understand its ambitious prdt and has ways to go and i am sure it must be helping a lot of people as is.
ciao…
Hi,
The new Mendeley Desktop version 1.3 will not load with Avira anti virus software installed as default. It gets caught by the “Guard” feature of Avira. Mendeley launches and then jams (no response)with the Guard process using 50% CPU. I have repeated this on two different laptops. Workaround is to add the Mendeley exe to the whitelist of the Avira Guard. I did not have this issue with any previous Mendeley versions. Hopefully between yourselves and Avira you can come to a solution. Otherwise, thanks for the new version – great to see it finally launches in a reasonable time now!