Harnessing/Managing Tags

wbeers · September 7, 2010

I'm a grad student historian and I spent the summer taking photos of docs in a foreign archive while inputting entries into Zotero as I went. Now I'm processing those photos in pdf format and linking them to my Zotero entries. I tagged all of my 500+ entries as "No PDF" to begin with and then as I found the related pdfs, changed the tag to "PDF OK" so those entries would disappear from the sort and help me track my progress.

The problem: most of my Zotero entries, when changed from "No PDF" to "PDF OK" stay in the "No PDF"-sorted window, but they're title is grayed-out. I wanted them to disappear entirely.

Attempted fixes: I've tried restarting both Firefox and my Mac (OS X 10.6.4) and I tried relabeling the entire "No PDF" tag to "Not linked to PDF" but some of the "PDF OK" documents persist in being sorted in with the others, only in that grayed-out format I mentioned. I still have about 300 entries left to link to PDF and it would be helpful to fix this early on if possible.

Thanks!
Wynne

ajlyon · September 8, 2010

Could child items (the images) of the Zotero entries still have the No PDF tag on them? The grayed-out title usually means that the item itself doesn't match the current condition (here, the current tag), but one of its child items does match (here, likely some of your images).

wbeers · September 8, 2010

Wow that was it! I used the "notes" function to make explanatory comments on about half the entries and they were all still black while the citation itself and the images/pdfs were grayed out. The ones that disappeared properly earlier were ones that had no associated notes.

I didn't realize that child items can have their own tags but it certainly makes sense. Thanks for the help!