Where are the keywords located in zotero?

kirk86

I've seen that when I import an item with web importer sometimes it also pulls keywords but those keywords it seems that I can't modify them through zotero. Initially I thought they were saved on the extra field but upon a closer investigation it seems that it's not the case. When I open my .bib file with items from zotero via an external ref manager I can clearly see those keywords and manipulate them. Additionally, what I did was to actually remove all keyword sections from .bib file and then on my surprise upon closing and reopening zotero it recreated the keywords an exported them again in the .bib file. There's must some hidden setting or something that I'm missing here? Any ideas?

adamsmith

They're under tags in the right-hand panel
(nothing you do in a .bib file will update anything in Zotero)

kirk86

Then how do you explain these keywords showing up on a different reference manager when opening the .bib file versus these ones which exist in zotero tags. Obviously there are much more keywords showing up when opening the .bib file using external ref. manager versus all the tags that show up in zotero.

dstillman

I'm not really sure what you mean here. As adamsmith says, all tags on an item show up in the right-hand pane. If you don't see them there, they don't exist on that item.

If you think you're seeing something different, we'd want to know the URL you're importing from and the BibTeX export from Zotero for just that newly imported item.

emilianoeheyns

If I'd have to guess, this is a possible scenario that explains what @kirk86 describes:

* You have imported some references at some point which created automatic tags
* You have disabled display of automatic tags in Zotero
* You have a BBT auto-export set up for that bib file

This would give you a situation in which you would in Zotero not see some tags that are attached to some items (the automatic ones), and something triggered BBT (which is not part of Zotero, so the Zotero devs cannot be responsible for what it does) to start the auto-export, which overwrites your bib file, which restores the keywords you manually edited out.

If this describes your situation correctly: you are not supposed to edit auto-exported files, as the entire point of auto-export is that BBT will overwrite the file afresh when affected items change in Zotero. If you want to make changes to auto-exported files, you will need to use a BBT postscript.

dstillman

Right, to be clear, adamsmith and I were both referring to the right-hand pane, but I see now that @kirk86 provided a screenshot of the tag selector. The automatic tags display setting applies to the tag selector but not the item tag pane. So if the question is just "why do some tags appear in the right-hand pane that don't appear in the tag selector", then yes, it's that setting.

kirk86

@emilianoheyns That's correct, that describes appropriately my situation.
Can you point me to an example of a BBT postscript?

emilianoeheyns

Samples of postscripts are at https://retorque.re/zotero-better-bibtex/scripting/, but in your case, it looks to me like you'd simply want to go into the item in zotero and delete the automatic tags in the right-hand pane, no postscript required.

kirk86

@emilianoheyns true but the only problem is that they don't show up on the right-hand pane at all. For the same item which contains different keywords in zotero doesn't show anything neither in the right-hand pane nor in the tags sections in the lower left pane. But if I open the .bib file in bibdesk and navigate to the same item all the keywords show up. Any idea how to resolve this?

dstillman

That's not possible. The right-hand pane shows all tags on the item, even with automatic tags hidden in the tag selector.

As I say above, if you think you're seeing something different, we'd want to know the URL you're importing from and the BibTeX export from Zotero for just that newly imported item.

emilianoeheyns

Right - export such a reference with this standard bibtex exporter. If the tags are not there, it's a BBT cache issue. If they are there, I don't know what could be wrong, but then it's not BBT.

kirk86

Thanks folks, I think it was a cache issue, now things seem to be back to normal.