Can I edit a field in multiple entries at the same time?

Gabriel_p

Basically, the title of the post. I want to empty the 'Additional' field (not sure if it's called that in english, maybe 'Extras'?) for a lot of articles at the same time.

Can this be done?

bwiernik

Not easily. In Zotero for Firefox, you can use the JavaScript API to do some batch editing (https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/client_coding/javascript_api). Better Batch is planned generally, but no estimate for when it will arrive.

Gabriel_p

Too bad. I rather not mess with my database, so I guess it's time for some manual batch editing.

Thank you!

dragonfly

In the absence of an internal solution perhaps you can apply automation scripting to the Zotero GUI?

bwiernik

dragonfly, those are essentially the same thing. Designing a usable GUI is generally one of the hardest parts of development work.

dragonfly

@bwiernik - No, I'm talking about external tools which do not require any internal coding of Zotero (or other such GUI's automated).

The choice of automation tool is influenced to a degree by the host (Windows, Linux, Mac) but I can point to some I've used (currently I'm in Ubuntu so Actionaz is my choice):-

Actionaz - https://www.jmgr.net/ - (Windows and Linux)
AutoHotKey - https://autohotkey.com/ - (Windows)
Selenium (for Firefox browser)

In Actionaz for example a script with extension *.ascr is produced.
You can click on an item in Zotero standalone GUI.
Click Tab once to get to Info tab
Click Tab again n times (in a loop) to move down to Extra: field
Click Del to delete Extra: value
Refer to next item and repeat. You can look for [Extra:] as an image.

That is a simple example but complex automation scripts can be written as workflows.

Basically you are writing sequences of key strokes, sometimes looking for target images on the screen, if looping through a fixed number of Tabs does not work.

Often these tools are used to test GUI's.