Adding a tag to multiple selected items?

jeapordy

Is there any way to do this?

adamsmith

Yes. You can drag the items onto a tag in the tag selector on the left (for colored tags you can also just press the number assigned to the tag with multiple items selected)

jeapordy

Thank you for that, adamsmith. How about adding a new tag that doesn't exist yet, though?

dstillman

You'd need to add a tag to one item and then drag the rest of the items.

jeapordy

I suppose there lies the rub. Are there any plugins that do this without having to go this convoluted way? I've seen some that supposedly batch edit tags, but they seem to have been abandoned several years ago.

adamsmith

No, but having to first create a tag and only then be able to multi-tag with it is fairly standard and this is 2 clicks extra, so "convoluted" seems like a rather strong term.

jeapordy

It just seems like tags are supposed to be one of Zotero's main functionalities and having to do it this way does not feel like it's part of its main functions but maybe an alpha feature for people who might be interested in playing around with it. I fail to understand how you think "convoluted" is a strong term here. It makes more sense to be able to set a new tag for a set of items. How this is even a debate is beyond me, and I'm not really sure why this wouldn't be a feature since the very start. *sigh* I'll just go mess around with some plugins and see if I can get a properly functioning tag system that way.

qqbb

The Zutilo add-on provides several keyboard shortcuts for working with tags.

See "Copy tags" and "Paste tags" in Zutilo's command reference. For quickly adding tags to a single item, setting up an "Add tag" shortcut could be useful. There are also shortcuts for working with Zotero's tag selector in the lower-left corner.

jmaxsfu

I'm with element4l here. I can't count how many times I've added a bunch of new entries (on a new topic), and grabbed them all hoping to add a couple of tags, only to remember, "Oh yeah, Zotero doesn't do that." It certainly seems like it *should* do that.

dstillman

I've created an issue for this.

samdiener

For exactly the reasons that jmaxsfu mentioned, this has long been the feature I've missed most in Zotero.

Jmbarker

Same. I've searched for instructions for doing this multiple times before remembering that there's no one-keystroke or right-click way to do it.

moore.709

I do definitely appreciate the both points here.
It is great to use Zutilo to paste a tag to multiple items
and it isn't super tough to have to start with one Item or one tag text first,
but it also would be nice and much more intuitive to not have to start with one.
Maybe is this pointing towards being a part of some other tag management refinements further down the road?

hsiangyu_wong

zotero tag addon can add tags in batch, seems to be the solution.
https://github.com/windingwind/zotero-tag

moore.709

cool;
Thanks @hsiangyu_wong