viewing attachments

I cannot for the life of me find on this website how to just VIEW an attachment.
1) there's nothing on the interface indicating what the column with or without blue dots is. It's indicating an attachment.
2) Ok, so where's the attachment? I click on the item, nothing under Notes, which is where I'd expect to find it, given what I found on here.
3) It could be an "attached" URL. But no, there are items in my library which have a URL under "Info", but do not show up with a blue dot.
Help?
  • There's a small arrow to the left of any item with an attachment. By clicking that you can expand the view and see what the attachment is. Double-clicking the attachment will open it.
    Just double-clicking an item with an attachment will also open the attachment.
  • Aha, I see! Thank you for the ultra-swift response.

    It's a little confusing because items that do not have the blue dot also have the arrow on the left. Also, because some items that are attachments are simply "attached" URLs, and yet lots of items which have a URL under "info" have no attachment; and some items with notes have no attachments.
  • the blue dot signifies an attachment. Items that have a filled out blue dot have an actual attachment (an empty blue dot signifies an attachment that's not present locally). Attached links do _not_ get a blue dot, you're confusing those with Snapshots, which are complete local copies of webpages and thus just as much an attachment as a PDF.

    Any item with any child item - note, link, or attachment gets the arrow on the left.
  • Picking up on this. Is there a why to decide which action (link to URL, file, snapshot etc.) Zotero takes if an item is double-clicked? It seems that it associates the action to the very first documents that is "attached" to the item. If you add something different, you can't set a different default, right?
  • correct, the default behavior is hard-coded.
  • OK, thanks! So one needs to act strategically when deciding which item to associate first, good to know.
  • Would there be a way to exhibit similar behavior to how Bookends and Endnote present attachments, i.e. in a panel on the right? It would be fab to see a searchprase presented immediately in context. I'm using ZoteroQuicklook and while it does work very well, it's still relatively cumbersome.
  • That isn't possible until Zotero moves to a new development platform, which is planned for the relatively near future. My understanding is that improvements to search results display is planned as part of larger interface updates.
  • Hi bwiernik, thank you for that info; that's a good thing to know. Really it's my only gripe with Zotero apart from attachment sync (but we'll get that sorted eventually as well).
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