Search for both included and excluded terms fails
I'm battling Advanced Search as always.
As an example, I am trying to find papers where the attachment (PDF) contains "motoneuron", but does not contain "saccade".
* I go to advanced search, set an "attachment contents", "contains" and enter 'motoneuron'. I get lots (50+) of hits.
* I add another criterion "attachment contents", "does not contain", and enter 'saccade'. I get no hits at all.
Just to test, I replace 'saccade' with 'bzbzbzbzbzbzb' - something that should not be in any text anywhere in my Zotero collection. I still get no hits at all.
1) Am I still completely misunderstanding how search works in Zotero?
2) If so, how do I find items where the PDF contains one term but not another?
As an example, I am trying to find papers where the attachment (PDF) contains "motoneuron", but does not contain "saccade".
* I go to advanced search, set an "attachment contents", "contains" and enter 'motoneuron'. I get lots (50+) of hits.
* I add another criterion "attachment contents", "does not contain", and enter 'saccade'. I get no hits at all.
Just to test, I replace 'saccade' with 'bzbzbzbzbzbzb' - something that should not be in any text anywhere in my Zotero collection. I still get no hits at all.
1) Am I still completely misunderstanding how search works in Zotero?
2) If so, how do I find items where the PDF contains one term but not another?
attachment content --> contains
attachment content --> does not contain
are empty
edit: Dan is right. I though I had gotten a result on "does not contain", but that's not the case.
(A non-matching Attachment Content condition now matches all items — attachments or not — which is weird, but consistent with Attachment File Type.)
One note though: I am almost 100% certain that this used to work at some time (can't tell you when, as updates are transparent). I have relied on doing this before when I do one of my periodic clean-ups of my paper piles.
Would it be untoward to ask for an optional, experts-only, if-it-breaks-you-keep-the-pieces regexp interface for searching?
Oh, and a way to prune the list of search types would be nice. I only ever use exactly three items in that list - attchement contains, note contains and tag - and finding those three in a loooong drop-down list each and every time is pretty frustrating.
In fact, my dream would be to let me specify and name a "group" of search fields (those three above) and just let me search in that group by default.
1) Google for "PDF".
2) Download the W-4 form and save to Zotero. Do a quick search in "Everything" mode for "tax" to make sure it's indexed.
3) Open the advanced search window: mode "all", attachment conditions [Attachment Content] [contains] ["tax"] and [Attachment Content] [does not contain] ["foo"], nothing checked.
It finds the PDF for me. It already exists. Click the drop-down in the Attachment Content condition.
* Title, contains, "saccade"
* Title , does not contain, "bzbzbzbzbzbzb"
Works. It seems to give me roughly the same set of documents.
I search:
* Attachment contents, contains, "saccade"
* Attachment contents, does not contain, "bzbzbzbzbzbzb"
Gives me zero documents. No checkboxes make any difference.
* Removing the "does not contain" condition gives me a long list, as expected.
* Just in the unlikely case that I have added "bzbzbzbzb" to all my documents by mistake, I also look for "does not contain", "xyzzybubliapp" with the same results.
Edit: If I have "attachement contents", "does not contain" with anything, or nothig at all, then it will always return no hits no matter what other conditions I have or not.
Neat! But I was thinking one level up; where I can really search the entire text and metadata of posts, not just a specified field.
Thanks!