Searching for content in childnotes?

Hello there,
I have the problem that I don't know how to find the content written in childnotes.
My childnotes usually consist of Some concept I found in the literature it is attached to and the page numbers where I found that concept specifically in the book.
So now I want to search for "Page 112" in Childnote to Book "Book1":
I type in the advanced search:
Match all of the following:
Title contains "Book1"
Childnote contains "Page 112"
-> but then I get nothing

if I just search for:
childnotes contains "Page 112"
-> I get the hole tree of my Book1 with all the notes, no mark where this page 112 was found, so not really useful.
So I think I misunderstood how this search feature works. Is there a way how I can find a childnote containing "some text" and is attached to bibliographic entry "book1"?


  • The note(s) which contain(s) the text will be in dark black, all others in light grey.
  • Thanks for the anwer.

    Unfortunately they are not.
    If I search for: match all
    Title contains "Booktitle"
    Childnote contains "some Text"
    -> I get:
    bla bla bla Booktitle bla bla bla (in black)
    - note 1 (grey)
    - note 2 (grey)
    - note 3 (grey)
    - note 4 (grey)

    although I know that "some Text" is in note 2
    As already written above: If I just search for childnote contains "thistext"
    I get just the top items / not the childnotes, of course these top items have dropdowns with their notes, but again none of those are especially marked, they are all grey. Also none of the checkboxes are checked, but they also appear not to make any difference when checked. My version of zotero is 5.0.58

    Is this the normal behavior or is this a bug? And if first: What do I have to type in that I get my expected results as written above.
  • Oh sorry, searching for "Childnote" is specifically designed to find the parent. You want to search for
    Note -- contains -- "some text"
    instead
  • Hey, thanks :)
    But now I still get all Notes with "Page 111". But as I have a lot of books with a Page 111 it still is not really helpful. Is there a possible search query where I can say I want the notes and only those that have "Page 111" and are attached to book "Book1" ?
    Thanks for the help
  • If you check the "Include parent & child" option in the ALL search for book title and Note content
  • adamsmith, you saved my day :)
    Have a nice morning, midday or evening, wherever you are located.

    PS: one last thing: do I have to mark the thread explicitly as SOLVED or will it just be ignored when its solved and is looses priority that way?
  • The latter, no need to mark as solved
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