Finding items without attachments

hbraum

I am trying to identify items in my large Zotero library that do not currently have attachments. I found this thread in the forum (https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/25615/how-to-find-entries-without-a-pdf-attachment), but in Zotero 5, the option to search a saved search doesn't seem to exist anymore unless I'm missing something? Is there another way to do what I'm looking to do? Thanks!

adamsmith

Saved searches are just grouped under collections in the advanced search. Everything else from that thread remains correct.

benifex

I have been trying to do the exact same thing as @hbraum. A couple of notes for others who may be doing likewise:

- I found that running "Attachment File Type -- is --- PDF" against a saved search didn't work. (i.e. "Collection -- is -- Name_of_my_saved_search" AND "Attachment File Type -- is --- PDF"). It gave me all of the items in that saved search, which is obviously wrong.

- However, running it against a Subcollection appeared to work, though oddly, the item count was off by about a factor of five, perhaps because it was counting every Attachment and Note (?).

- NB when you do the above, you need to select 'Include parent and child items of matching items'.

- After that, the next step was to create a saved search combining:
"Attachment File Type -- is --- PDF" run against a Subcollection
AND Collection is -- Name_of_my_saved_search

- and then the mirror image of the above, a saved search with no PDF attachments

So now I can use the no-PDF-attachment saved search as a sort of to do list for finding PDFs.

raughter

Same results here, as above -
"- I found that running "Attachment File Type -- is --- PDF" against a saved search didn't work. (i.e. "Collection -- is -- Name_of_my_saved_search" AND "Attachment File Type -- is --- PDF"). It gave me all of the items in that saved search, which is obviously wrong. "

dstillman

Try this:

Search 1:

[Attachment File Type] [is] [PDF]
[x] "Include parent and child items of matching items"

Search 2:

[Collection] [is not] [Search 1]
[x] Show only top-level items

joycekwc

Thanks @dstillman - your suggestion worked for me.

svoida

Thanks @dstillman. Came looking for this and your suggestion worked flawlessly.