Upgrade StorageAvailable for beta testing: More-advanced advanced search
dstillman
Zotero Team
In the latest Zotero beta, we've completely overhauled how advanced search works.
Advanced search is now available via a filter button in the quick-search bar, and it opens right above the items list in the main window. You can filter any view, including collections or saved searches, and immediately work with the results. With new multi-collection selection, you can perform advanced searches across multiple collections or searches or even across multiple libraries.
Searches are now much more powerful, with support for nested condition groups and automatic mapping of conditions across levels of the hierarchy. It's now trivial to, say, search for top-level items with a given author AND (a descendant annotation that is either yellow OR red). For any search, you pick what result level you want to find (e.g., "top-level items" or "annotations), and the search conditions you use will automatically be mapped to that result level. So you can find top-level items even if you're searching for annotation content two levels below or find all annotations underneath top-level items with a given tag. Searching for attachments within collections or combining conditions across the hierarchy used to require chaining multiple saved searches, and those searches can now be represented easily in a single search. ("Show only top-level items" and the inexplicable "Include parent and child items of matching items" checkbox are now gone, as is the "Child Note" condition, which is now just searching for "top-level items" with a given "Note" condition.)
Clicking the advanced-search button with something entered into the quick-search bar will automatically populate an equivalent advanced search (including with a new "Title, Creator, Year" condition that matches the semantics of that mode). Since the advanced-search pane persists when you click between collections, this also addresses the longstanding request to be able to pin searches when moving between collections.
Finally, we've added some new search conditions — annotation type, color, and author — and will add more soon.
There's a lot of new functionality here, so let us know if anything is confusing. For specific bugs, please open new threads.
Advanced search is now available via a filter button in the quick-search bar, and it opens right above the items list in the main window. You can filter any view, including collections or saved searches, and immediately work with the results. With new multi-collection selection, you can perform advanced searches across multiple collections or searches or even across multiple libraries.
Searches are now much more powerful, with support for nested condition groups and automatic mapping of conditions across levels of the hierarchy. It's now trivial to, say, search for top-level items with a given author AND (a descendant annotation that is either yellow OR red). For any search, you pick what result level you want to find (e.g., "top-level items" or "annotations), and the search conditions you use will automatically be mapped to that result level. So you can find top-level items even if you're searching for annotation content two levels below or find all annotations underneath top-level items with a given tag. Searching for attachments within collections or combining conditions across the hierarchy used to require chaining multiple saved searches, and those searches can now be represented easily in a single search. ("Show only top-level items" and the inexplicable "Include parent and child items of matching items" checkbox are now gone, as is the "Child Note" condition, which is now just searching for "top-level items" with a given "Note" condition.)
Clicking the advanced-search button with something entered into the quick-search bar will automatically populate an equivalent advanced search (including with a new "Title, Creator, Year" condition that matches the semantics of that mode). Since the advanced-search pane persists when you click between collections, this also addresses the longstanding request to be able to pin searches when moving between collections.
Finally, we've added some new search conditions — annotation type, color, and author — and will add more soon.
There's a lot of new functionality here, so let us know if anything is confusing. For specific bugs, please open new threads.