search author, date, and title simultaneously on zotero.org?

I'm observing some unexpected behavior in the zotero.org "My Library" search, and I couldn't find a prior report on it in the forum.

For example, let's say I have a book in my library, "Digital image processing" by Gonzalez and Woods, published in 2002.

This will show up in the search results if I search for, e.g., "digital", "gonzalez", "woods", or "2002". This is expected.

However, if I search for "gonzalez 2002", "2002 digital", "gonzalez digital", or any other combination of author, year, and title keyword, I get no results ('No Items Found'). I can reproduce this behavior for every item I've tried so far. Clicking on the drop down menu to select "Full Text" search does not change the behavior.

It seems like although the web search looks at the Creator, Title, and Year fields, it requires that the entire search query be found in a single field of the three. Is this working as intended?
  • Yes, this is working as intended. Currently all searches via the website are phrase searches. We'll add the ability to search for individual words, as well as the ability to search for other fields, in the future.
  • We may be able to fix this sooner than adding support for the other fields, though — I'll take a look this week to see how difficult it will be. I'll post here if there's any progress.
  • Thank you. I will look forward to the enhancement.
  • On a similar note, I kind of expected this search (using the "Search Full Text" option) https://www.zotero.org/groups/first_world_war_studies_bibliography/items/q/Round Table to turn up all articles published in the journal "The Round Table". I take it publication titles are not included in the search results?
  • I take it publication titles are not included in the search results?
    Correct. "Full Text" refers specifically to full-text attachment content, not "Everything" as in the client. The only metadata fields searched currently are Title, Creator, and Date.

    (Start a new thread with other questions. This one is specifically about phrase searching.)
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