Search every field in advanced / saved searches

Hi, I'm new to Zotero. I'm coming over from Endnote. I have a bunch of smart searches in Endnote that search 'all fields' for specific text strings.

For example, in Zotero, I want to find all references that have the word "narrative" in any field. It looks like I have to specify each field in which I want to search. Is there a faster and more efficient way to do this?
  • That's a common request, and it's planned, but it's currently only possible via the quick search in the toolbar. For now you'll need to specify the specific fields you want to search.

    You can, of course, create a saved search with whatever other conditions you want and then use the search bar for the final filter.
  • I ended up using a batch edit feature in endnote to add a shortened name of the saved search to keywords. When importing the endnote library, keywords become tags. Then I just organized tags into collections in Zotero.
  • edited May 23, 2019
    OK, just to clarify, you can search all fields in Zotero using Everything mode in the search bar, and you can add all results to a collection. So that part could've been done in Zotero as well. You just can't currently search all fields in a saved search without creating separate search conditions.
  • edited May 23, 2019
    Thank you for the help, by the way. That makes sense to me. I didn't want to go that route because I had about 30 saved searches in endnote, and many of them were complicated searches involving and/or/not statements that searched multiple fields with 5-10 different search terms. Recreating those searches in Zotero would have been too difficult.
  • OK, that makes sense.
  • Hello, are there any updates on this subject?

    Is there a way to search all in the Advanced Search now, or is it planned to be implemented?
  • We've added an Any Field condition — searching all fields, notes, and tags — in the latest Zotero beta. It will be included in Zotero 6.0.19.
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