Copying images from zotero notes

a_wood
I have started using zotero for storing notes alongside journal articles. I have been using the snapshot feature in adobe pdf reader to take screenshots of figures and paste them in zotero notes. However, when I try to copy images out of zotero notes and into another program (word, onenote, irfanview) the image does not paste. Is there any way of copying an image out of a zotero note and pasting into another program?
  • dstillman
    Don't store images in notes. Add them as attachments to the item, and then drag them from there (or, if that doesn't work for your particular use case, via right-click → Show File).

    (Images in notes aren't officially supported. It was a fluke that you could add them originally, but they never synced. We now have the ability to block them but left in the ability to drag them because some people had started to rely on them locally, and we're hoping to support them properly in a future version. For what it's worth, though, on a Mac I can copy an image from a Zotero note and paste it into Word.)
  • a_wood
    I'm happy to work with them locally, I think it is much more valuable copying figures from journal articles to the notes rather than separate. Notes for me are there to remind me of important points and sometimes the figure can replace many words.

    I can workaround by recopying figures from the pdf of the article when I need to, but hope to see images in notes fully supported in the future!
  • rkaplan@umrpc.com
    edited February 28, 2019
    Images in Notes work really nicely and are stored in standtard HTML img format that can be used in other software applications.

    I have been working for some time on a project to export Zotero data to a CSV file that can be used to generate reports with Tab and Extra fields aggregated in a pivot table. I will likely release a beta version publicly in a couple months although if anyone has a particular interest sooner let me know and I will try to work something out.

    As an example look at the right most column in this report ("HTML Notes"). The last two records (scroll to the bottom of the report) show images copied into Zotero Notes and then exported to CSV for the report generator. The images can even then be embedded in a downloadable PDF version of the report. Some of the fields are just dummy data for test purposes but you can get an idea of how versatile this feature is - please do not remove it from Zotero!

    http://test.reference.solutions/pivot.html

  • dstillman
    edited February 28, 2019
    Images in Notes work really nicely
    Again, though, all but the smallest embedded images will break syncing, and they can also cause performance problems that affect Zotero startup and search speed.
  • rkaplan@umrpc.com
    edited February 28, 2019
    I see the warning alert that Notes with embedded images cannot be synced.

    Am I correct that syncing still works but just not for those items?

  • hadifalex
    Hi @dstillman !

    Just wanted to ask a small elaboration on the images part you mentioned before. You suggested that rather than dragging an image from (say) desktop onto Zotero Notes, that we instead create an attachment to the main file, and then drag the image from the stored location onto notes.

    However when I export notes on .md I do not get a link tracing it back to that attachment unlike with other images that are extracted straight from annotations.

    Is there a known solution to this or is it not yet a supported feature?

    Also it seems that any image attachments create their own little folder in Zotero. Is it possible to have any attachments to be added in a subfolder under that particular article's folder?

    Many thanks as always!
  • adamsmith
    Anything about images in notes in this thread is obsolete with Zotero 6, which has a completely new note editor with full support for them.
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