Available for beta testing: Annotations in the items list

dstillman

In the latest Zotero beta, annotations will now show up under their parent attachments in the items list.

Showing annotations in the items list makes it easier to view annotations across a library or collection, and it also makes it possible to search or filter for annotations directly. For example, you can search for all annotations in a collection with a given tag and then create a note from those annotations or copy them to an external text editor with Quick Copy.

In Advanced Search, you can use "Item Type" "is" "Annotation" to match annotations or use the Annotation Text and Annotation Comment search conditions to search for specific parts of the annotation. (It's not currently possible to restrict filtering to annotations in the main window, but it probably makes sense to add that, since, say, a given tag could be present on a regular item as well.)

You can assign tags to selected annotations by dragging them to the tag selector, just like other items.

Selected annotations show up in the item pane, grouped by top-level item. (They're not currently grouped by attachment when there are multiple child attachments, but we'll fix that.)

Please let us know if you run into any problems.

pcinque

Very nice!

gustms

This is great! Thank you!

iagogv

I haven't tested, but may I ask what happens if one item has many annotations associated? Expanding such item would show a row for each annotation? If that was the case, there would be some way/preference to choose non-displaying annotations (or only displaying annotations or displaying them in some summarized way)?

Thanks!

dstillman

@iagogv: They're nested under attachment items, so they don't show up when you just expand the top-level item.

varmont

Thanks, interesting!!! Is it possible to hide all annotations that don't match the search criteria (tags, annotation text, or annotation comments) and not just highlight them? This would make more sense, especially when dealing with many annotations. It would avoid having to scroll through all of them to locate the annotations that match the search criteria.

Perhaps this is already possible and it's just my inexperience that limits me, but thanks for the new features.

jeremyvancleve

Very cool feature!

I wonder if for the "Expand/Collapse Collections or Items List" feature using the "+/–" keys, one "+" could get all first children of items, another "+" could get all the children of the children, etc and same idea for "–".

This way, I can use "+" to get see all the PDFs and notes that are attachments of my items, and which another "+" I can see any annotations for all those PDFs.

abaevbog

You can press right arrow on selected rows to expand those items and reveal attachments and notes without expanding annotations rows. Arrow left would do the opposite by collapsing only one level of rows.

jeremyvancleve

yes of course, but +/– is nice for seeing rapidly the attachments etc for all items in the library.

dstillman

Right, but you can do Select All + Right Arrow to expand just the top-level items.

jeremyvancleve

ah, of course, thanks

afreedm1

Thank you, this is a game changer!

ofpetek

Thanks a lot for this cool feature. Since there is no hierarchy between the annotations other than page order, I strongly back the idea of "selective listing" in the items list. LG