search bar not working

csgarbossa

Apologies in advance if this is a "how did you not figure this out already?" stupid kind of question.
I am new to Zotero - I just switched from Mendeley, which I have used for quite some time but I wanted to support this app instead.
In Mendeley, there is a literature search bar where I can type in keywords, authors, or entire journal article titles to search the web for what I'm looking for. Example, let's say I wanted to find a paper about depression, if I simply only typed in 'depression' in the search bar I would have thousands of results pop up. Usually I use this feature for adding articles to my library when I alread.

I have no switched to Zotero and I cannot for the life of me, get the search bar to work for finding articles on the web. Does the search bar only search articles you already have in your library? I just keep getting 'no items in this view' in the right pane no matter whether I select 'everything', 'all fields & tags', or 'title, creator, year'. When I hit enter in the search bar, it thinks for about 0.1 seconds, and then does nothing.

Please help!

PS - I'm running MacOS Mojave 10.14.3 and this issue is on the desktop app - not the web app.

dstillman

In Zotero, the search bar is the web. The whole point of Zotero is that it integrates tightly with your web browser and allows you to save from a huge range of sites with a single click.

If you happen to have an identifier (DOI, ISBN, PMID, arXiv ID) for a source, you can add it from within the app using Add Item by Identifier, but otherwise you just find it in your browser and click Save to Zotero to save it to Zotero.

Read through Adding Items to Zotero to understand the basic recommended workflow here.

csgarbossa

Makes sense. However, as I've read through the discussions, the safari extension is not working for me (as explained by other threads). Could this be why my search bar in the desktop app is not working? I'm guessing my next option is that I need to add the extension to chrome for it to work.

dstillman

No, those things have nothing to do with one another. The search bar in the app just filters the current collection you're viewing.

There's a beta version of the Zotero Connector for current versions of Safari, but if you're not comfortable running beta software, you should use the Zotero Connector for Chrome or Firefox for now, yes.

bwiernik

Please re-read Dan’s comment. The search bar in the desktop app does not search the web. You use your web browser for that.

The Zotero Connector for Safari is not currently bundled with the regular release for Zotero because Safari bugs from Apple can make it a less than pleasant experience. You can either install the beta version of Zotero to use it with Safari or instead work with Firefox, Chrome, or Edge, which all have working Zotero Connectors.

csgarbossa

Thank you for the information and expertise. That was my main issue - on Mendeley I was used to being able to search the web within the search bar on the desktop app, however it seems that is not the case with Zotero.

Thank you for the help.

dstillman

The Mendeley search bar doesn't search the web — it searches Mendeley's catalog of items (much of which is just junk uploaded by other users that's incomplete or filled with errors).

Zotero supports a vastly wider range of sources and is targeted at a much wider range of uses, so the idea of a full-text search of a specific database doesn't make sense. Again, the goal of Zotero is to let you save essentially anything from the web as best as possible. (We also care much more about metadata quality and privacy, so we don't just show random data from other users.)

csgarbossa

Good to know. Thank you for the help! Issue solved.