batch edits

rcragun
I searched the forum and was surprised not to find this idea previously mentioned - What about batch editing of entries? For instance, if I have a collection of references I want to add tags to, it would be nice to do it all at once instead of individually.
  • dstillman
    Batch editing is a planned feature, but note that batch application of tags is already possible via the tag selector. Simply select one or more items and drag them onto a tag in the tag selector to assign the tag to those items. If in a collection or search, you'll likely want to check "Display all tags" first to show the tags that don't already match the visible items.
  • rcragun
    Good to know. Thanks.
  • marlened
    What happens when you want to batch edit something else than tags ? For instance, if you want to change the item type or add the same title to a lot of chapters from the same book ? I can see no easy way right now, and I'm a bit disappointed - well, my users are when they realize they forgot to fill the information in the right field...
    Is anyone working on this ?
  • adamsmith
    as Dan says above it's planned - and its one of the most important and most frequently requested missing features - but given the current state of development , you and your users will have to wait a little longer.
  • marlened
    Ok that's great, thanks !!
  • ablissmarshall
    So - batch editing? Like changing a bunch of entries with a place name listed to MI instead of Mich (and those wired things you get from WorldCat, etc.)?

    Is this feature getting added for those of us who can't do whatever that code magic is that worked for some other folks?
  • adamsmith
    yes that's it, yes that's still generally planned, but I don't have an ETA for you.
  • octavabasso
    edited March 19, 2017
    In the meantime, one solution I've been using with some success is exporting items as Zotero RDF (with Notes and Files included), editing the RDF file with a text editor with Find and Replace, and then re-importing them. This has worked for cases where I had many files from the same Web site and needed to standardize that Web site name across the files.

    After reimporting, you'll have to delete the original entries (or perhaps use the Duplicates merge feature).
  • bwiernik
    Note that exporting and re-importing items is creating entirely new items, not editing the existing ones. Among other things, this means that any links to existing Word or LibreOffice documents will break. If you do this method, then you you should definitely merge the duplicate item, NOT delete the originals. Merging will maintain the connections to documents (though, in that case, you probably want to export to RDF without notes or files to avoid creating duplicates of all of those).
  • octavabasso
    Agreed. If you've used Cite While You Write with any of the original entries, you'd definitely want to merge duplicates.
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