The Search condition do not work for attachment file type

ljkong
I'm going to create a saved search with the condition "attachment file type is not pdf"
However, as shown in the image, it seems do not work.
How should I do?
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u4616315/4o7ynmglhh4x37d6olwy.png
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    edited today at 3:19am
    Sorry, but any advanced-search reports would need to be against the Zotero 10 beta at this point. We've completely overhauled how search works for Zotero 10, so it's not worth even thinking about this for Zotero 9.

    If you try the beta (or Zotero 10 when it's released) and something isn't behaving how you expect, let us know.
  • tim820
    edited today at 8:24am
    There are several roundabout ways to find items without PDF attachments in Zotero 9, but none work very well.

    As you found "Attachment File Type is not PDF" doesn't seem to work for *all* PDFs (for example linked PDFs).

    But "Attachment File Type is PDF" does seem to include all PDFs (including linked PDFs). So one strategy I have tried is to first save that search, and then use Advanced Search's ability to set "Collection is not" to not only an actual collection but also to any existing Saved Search - the one that found all PDFs ... but that doesn't seem to work.

    Another way to find no-PDF items is to activate Zotero's Attachments column and then sort items on that column, to group items with/without the PDF attachment icon.

    Another (semi-useful) way is to add the Attachment Number column from the Attachment Scanner plugin below. Items reverse-sorted to the top of the list - with no attachments - will all be PDF-less items. But of course web snapshots are also counted as attachments, so items with one of those but no PDF will still have a count of "1". But the icon in the Attachments column mentioned above can help identify those snapshot-only items.
    https://github.com/SciImage/zotero-attachment-scanner

    Finally, a more obscure one ... if you make *all* your PDF file titles match your file names (that is, they include ".pdf") - as I do - then "Title contains .pdf" works to find those with PDF attachments. So "Title does not contains .pdf" should similarly find those without such a file title. So to Zotero, "Title" seems to cover not only the item title but also the file title (that may be as intended, or an 'unintended feature').
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