The REPORT feature!

twaring
Hey Zotero Folks,

I love Zotero. It makes everything easy. But I'd like to modify the style of the HTML output generated by the "Make a Report" feature. The CSS file that controls this seems to be located somewhere ending in:

zotero/skin/report/detial.css

But I can't find it. The current report is too verbose for my needs, and a way to (even manually) change that would be great. Eventually, a means of selecting fields to be displayed in a report would be ideal.

Thanks!
  • dstillman
    We'll be adding report customization options in the future to let you select fields, format options, etc. In the meantime, you can access the detail.css, detail_screen.css and detail_print.css files if you unzip the chrome/zotero.jar file. You can find them in skin/default/zotero/report/. See Modifying Zotero Files for more info.
  • twaring
    Ah. Thanks Dan! I'm always impressed at the speed of your replies.

    Keep up the amazing work. If you guys even accomplish half of what people are asking for you'll have created the best research tool in existence. Check that - you already have.

    Tim
  • amtthews
    I am using the Report feature to export a collection in html format. I am puzzled by the random nature in which the individual items appear in the report and wonder if there is any way to sort the way in which items appear in a Report. I had assumed that the Report would print out the way in which I had sorted items within the collection (by author, date, alphabetically by title, or whatever?)

    Apologies if this question has been asked before, I have only been using Zotero for a week and am enjoying its functionality.
  • preacher1120
    I can generate an HTML report in Chrome, but I can't save or print it. Any suggestions?
  • Simon
    preacher1120: That's not yet implemented in Zotero Standalone, but it is planned. You can save/print reports in Zotero for Firefox, though.
  • adebremond
    I think this is a dealbreaker.. seeing this beautiful report that I could share with my boss but unable to print it or send it in any form.. either through zotero Standalone or Zotero for Firefox. Any guidance on how I could print/email a report would be wonderful. Thanks!
  • fbennett
    I don't use reports, but from Zotero within Firefox, it looks like they come up as a formatted page in the browser. Using the browser print function, I can print the report directly as a PDF, or using the browser page save function, I can save it to disk as HTML. From there, I can open it with LibreOffice (or Word, I'm sure), and tweak the content for page breaks et cetera.

    That much should work on any system.
  • adebremond
    Thanks for the quick reply. I know how to use browser print functions no problem but I don't see the 'formatted page' in the browser.. Is there a way to 'produce a report' in the firefox version? The regular browser view won't work as it hides too much information (report prints tags/notes/ect). Haven't been able to save as HTML or pdf for that matter, that's the problem but any help is appreciated!
  • fbennett
    You wrote that you see a beautiful report. How are you generating it?
  • adamsmith
    in Zotero for FF (with Standalone closed) right-click on the items and use "generate report". The "beautiful" reports (with tags, notes and everything) will open as a regular html page within Firefox. You can save it as html or print it directly from FF.


    You can currently not do this from Zotero Standalone as this and other threads note - this will be forthcoming shortly. You can also not do this from your online library at Zotero.org - if(!) that is going to happen it will likely take longer, though anyone could write an application that takes advantage of the server API to generate reports from the online library.
  • dstillman
    though anyone could write an application that takes advantage of the server API to generate reports from the online library
    (fcheslack actually just did exactly that as a libZotero example. If there's sufficient interest, we could make that available as a dedicated tool. That's a discussion for elsewhere, though.)
  • czografos
    not sure if this is of help anymore, but you can create a report in standalone (by right-clicking on selected files) and then save it as pdf (i'm on a mac); you can then use a file converter (i used Zamzar, but i think there are several other ones, plus apparently you can convert from .pdf to .doc directly from adobe acrobat) to convert the file into a format you could manipulate

    i came across this solution as i was looking for a way of using zotero to generate an annotated literature which i could then use as prime material for a literature review; while reading each book/ paper i included in my zotero library, i was adding tags (and notes) to each zotero item, which then helped me filter records to focus on the topic for my literature review and generate the report related to that topic
  • jamesrtyson
    edited January 1, 2024
    Hello Fellow Zotero Users,

    There hasn't been any news in this thread for some time now.

    As far as I can tell, there has not been any modification of the reporting features: reports can't be customized in format or field selection; moreover, as Zotero has been updated, 3rd part extensions for reports are no longer working and not being updated.

    Reporting is key to 'added value' use of Zotero. The annotation features, tagging, search folders, all provide ways for users to leverage the work they do capturing data , creating value and integrating Zotero into the analytical work-flow. While I have a reasonable reading knowledge of CSS and if really necessary javascript, I have been quite unable to make much sense of the existing third party extension from "https://github.com/retorquere/zotero-report-customizer" and while the author indicates that they are maintaining/updating that project, those of us who can't contribute are only able to sit back and wait.

    For me, demonstrating to Students that zotero offers more than a simple Word plug-in to help them avoid plagiarism (frankly that's how they tend to see things) is part of moving beyond 'essay writing' to literary scholarship as qualitative research.

    Is there a realistic likelihood that reporting features will improve, as Dan seems to imply? Is anyone else interested in pushing the work forward? I was thinking that a #hackathon might be one way to kick-start the work. If necessary we could do it virtually, or we could look at hosting a live weekend end of zotero hacking?
  • vglsVR
    Hello
    I have only just updated my version of Zotero (working in government it takes a while to do this), and just realised that the report customizer no longer works!
    I too am incredibly dissapointed.
    As a librarian working in government I used the report customizer everyday to send literature search results to clients. It was a really efficient method of massaging the metadata to send to clients.
    I think I may now need to revert back to EndNote or look at Mendeley.
    Thanks jamesrtyson for your post. Otherwise, I would have thought it was me not doing something right.

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