Sorting by date? Correct format for date?

tfield3
I'm really enjoying the program. Heard about it from one of GMU's students at the archives and her excitement convinced me to try it. Still, I'm a bit confused as to the date field. My documents come from a wide variety of boxes and collections, and many of them are poorly organized (ie documents are not in chronological order). It would help me tremendously if I could sort the documents (once I have entered them) by date. Is this possible? It seems like they are only sortable by creator, title and date CREATED. Strange. Also, what format should I use for the date of the document?

Thanks for helping us researchers out!
  • dstillman
    You'll be able to sort by date in the next release, which should be out sometime in the next week.

    You can use whatever format you like in the date field—as long as Zotero can parse it correctly, you'll be able to sort and generate citations correctly. Look for the 'ymd' indicator next to the date field—if all three letters appear, it has parsed year, month and day. (This lets you use freeform dates such as "Summer 2006" and "circa 1872" in addition to standard dates.)
  • tfield3
    Thanks. That's great to hear! Keep up the good work.
  • tfield3
    Two suggestions for the next edition: First of all, if I am entering a lot of documents from a single folder or record box, it would help if I could quickly enter the same "call number" for many successive documents. It is strange, b/c I am able to enter Authors and Publishers easily if I have already entered them once...just by hitting arrow down once I'm in the field. But for call numbers and location and repository this does not seem to be an option.
    The other suggestion is also quite small, but a change could save a whole lot of time. When I add attachments to an entry, they are usually jpgs and they come from the same folder in 'my pictures.' Yet every time I get to a new entry and want to add an attachment, I am thrown back to my desktop at which point I have to browse back through my folders to get to the correct one with the document photos.

    Just a couple of ideas. Thanks again! I'm enjoying the program.
  • raf
    I would like to make an additional suggestion related to sorting by date:

    It would be great if (1) a list of records by the same author would also be sorted chronographically and (2) records sorted by date would also be sorted alphabetically with reference to author.

    R

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