feature request: search for whole word and for case sensitive match

james.k.russell
I just searched my own database for an article by a familiar first author, it happens named "Rea". From a database of nearly 20,000 entries, an Advanced Search (i.e. using " at the beginning), even restricting the search to Title, Creator and Year returned over 1000 matches, not very helpful. I have already requested that a feature of searching only first authors would have helped a lot, reducing it to 48 items for me to search further. Failing that, adding features to match only whole words, (eliminating the returns with e.g. "treatment" in the title) or case (similarly) would help a great deal. These are common constraints available for searches in other tools. They would be helpful in Zotero.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    Presumably you know you can do an advanced search (a real advanced search, not the " thing in the quick search, which for some reason we label as "advanced search" as well) for a specific creator name, right?
  • nicolas.lienart
    I'd like to use advanced search to find references being titled either with "PLA" as case sensitive and whole word, or "Polylactic" as whole word but not case sensitive.
    It seems to me that it's not possible as of version 7.0.11 ?

    Otherwise, +1 for this feature request
  • james.k.russell
    Advanced Search doesn't quite fill the bill here. For instance, if I search for Rea with "is", it matches nothing because they always have co-authors. But if I search with "contains", if produces scores of hits because e.g. Andrea and Boudreaux are included.

    For nicolas.lienart,
    . advanced search (Title, Any Field, etc, your choice) for PLA, save as PLA
    . advanced search for Polylactic, save as Polylactic
    . advanced search for polylactic, save as polylactic
    . advanced search for Collection is PLA OR (i.e. add another search row with + sign to right) Collection is Polylactic OR Collection is polylactic and set Match (near the top) to Any will get you most of the way there.

    Case sensitivity is another issue. There are feature requests for that. Search forums for case sensitive.
  • james.k.russell
    oops - because case sensitivity is lacking, only the 2nd and 3rd clauses do any good
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