Annotation timestamps and impact on pdf date modified field

omian

Hi,

I've recently switched from Mendeley to Zotero.

Something I found quite useful in Mendeley is pdf annotations (highlights or notes) contained timestamps so I could see then they were created. In Mendeley Desktop this can be seen in the annotations pane or by hovering over an annotation.

As far as I can tell, this does not happen in Zotero (or at least its not shown to the user). But perhaps I am not aware of a relevant setting. Is there any way to display annotation timestamps in Zotero?

On a related note, I notice that when I add an annotation to a PDF in Zotero it does not change the date/time in the Date Modified column in the main item list for my library. Is there an option for Data Modified to be updated when an annotation is added/changed?

Thanks

ronnja

Did you find a solution?

I know it happens, but I am not sure if there is a way to display them in Zotero. I would guess it's a plugin if something. They are stored in js moment format but not available from the UI and I am not sure how they are stored in the db either, couldn't find any information.

omian

I realised after my post that you can see annotation timestamps by hovering the mouse pointer over the upper portion of the annotations in the annotations sidebar.

However, as far as I can tell the following Mendeley-like behaviour is not possible:
* See annotation timestamp by hovering over the annotations in the pdf view itself
* Have the annotation timestamps permanently visible in the annotations sidebar.

In relation to my final question, as far as I can tell none of the column options in the library list/view reflect the date that an annotation was most recently added/modified.

Also don't know if there are any any plugins or 3rd party applications which make annotation timestamps more easily accessible.

ronnja

>I realised after my post that you can see annotation timestamps by hovering the mouse pointer over the upper portion of the annotations in the annotations sidebar.

Oh wow, haha. Thanks!

I agree with you that we could have more. I too would like to see at a glance my last visit or even filter annotations by date. For now though, after crawling through the plugins, I don't think we're there yet, for both of your issues. Here are some options:

1) Manually change an item field to update the modified date.
2) Use Zotero-tag plugin to automatically add a tag (and remove it, if you want) to the item on open or close, so the modified date gets updated. (If you have no use for this field). I know it's not per annotation, but close.
3) Get used to it. Different programs have different paradigms. Do you really need to constantly see the timestamp of the annotations, or would perhaps the mouse hover be enough?
4) Write your own plugin to modify these things, or build zotero yourself by only modifying the necessary code. I have no pointers to this, the zotero codebase is too large for me to understand and help you on this one.
5) ???

Here's some others topics relating closely to this issue, showing that others are interested in similar features.

https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/69797/feature-request-sort-files-by-access-time
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/96635/feature-request-update-the-extracted-annotation-note-automatically
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/100660/feature-request-preference-for-automatically-create-note-from-annotations

asafdf

Hi，
> I realised after my post that you can see annotation timestamps by hovering the mouse pointer over the upper portion of the annotations in the annotations sidebar.

I can't see the timestamps even when I hover my mouse pointer over the upper portion of the annotations in the annotations sidebar. What should I do?