This is really encouraging! Thank you. https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/84640/adding-metadata-to-an-existing-item#latest

Have you considered allowing URLs there & using translator infrastructure to import metadata?

We have, and it's a possibility. We don't support URLs in Add Item by Identifier largely because gated files wouldn't be available, which isn't an issue here. But gated databases and databases without permalinks still wouldn't work, so I'd be a little worried that it would make things more error-prone and confusing with limited benefit. If there's a PDF and useful extractable data, there's a good chance there's also an identifier on the page. But I'm open to allowing this.

FWIW, I don't know if I buy that having separate processes for "create parent from PID" and "create new item, paste in PID, update metadata" makes sense

I'm not totally sure what you mean for the second option here. Do you mean just having "Create Parent Item" work like it used to, creating an empty item, and relying on pasting and updating, or do you mean creating a parent item automatically?

If you mean the former, I think a dedicated window like this, where "Create Parent Item" privileges creating by identifier, is a clear usability win over creating an empty item and hoping that people think to paste in an identifier in the correct field (which currently won't even exist much of the time) and trigger metadata updating. Metadata updating is really intended for a different use case, where you have existing metadata filled in and want to update it, and the implementation we're working on offers granular control over field changes, which isn't necessary here. We can optimize pasting an identifier into an empty item — automatically retrieving metadata and skipping the diff dialog — but it's still not really a replacement for a simple dialog that asks you to paste in any identifier.

If you mean automatically creating a parent item for PDFs that can't be recognized, that could make sense. It would obviously avoid a very common source of confusion. My main concern is that a significant number of people who don't care about citations do use Zotero with standalone PDFs, and I'd be a bit nervous about enforcing the creation of parent items with just a title named after the PDF filename. It would also make it more awkward to add parent items via web or import for unrecognized PDFs with no identifiers (though allowing adding by URL would address much of the web case). But it might be worth it — there are advantages to always having a parent item, including the ability to take any number of child notes instead of relying on a single embedded attachment note (which we've always sort of regretted supporting). This would still have the problems I mention above about pasting an identifier into a specific field, so I think we would still want some sort of option to set metadata by any identifier, either in the context menu or even in the item pane for otherwise empty items (if we could do so in a way that wasn't too annoying for cases where an identifier wasn't an option).

For the adding via identifier scenario, I was actually thinking of your first option. My thinking was that this is somewhat rare and the separate dialog seems unecessary for that, but as I say, I could be completely wrong.

Oh, I don't think it's rare at all — we tell people all the time, and in the documentation, that if the PDF isn't recognized they can either save from the web or use Add Item by Identifier to create a parent item, and only if that fails enter metadata manually. So this is simply privileging that (particularly if we allow URLs) and deemphasizing manual entry. If there's no identifier, or you really want to enter metadata manually, an empty item is just one more click ("Manual Entry") in the dialog.

So I'm actually pretty confident that this will avoid a lot of confusion and tedious manual entry. We just might be able to come up with something that also avoids the problem of people not knowing to use Create Parent Item in the first place.

This is available now in Zotero 5.0.94. We'll work on further streamlining the process for unrecognized PDFs in a future version.

How can this be turned off so that it just creates the parent item (without a prompt)?

Currently it can't, sorry. Not sure if Zotero would consider a preference there -- I'd honestly doubt it -- it seems like the type of thing where overcustomizability creates more problems than it solves (fairly rare use case, lots of additional troubleshooting & potential confusion).

My current work around is to use the prior version 5.0.92.

@dstillman: Many of my files are already locally stored on my computer. I drag/drop them in batch to add them to Zotero; then I will typically select the batch of files that have no parent and click the option to Create Parent Items. Now I am able to finish adding the metadata I need such as tags or use some of my add-ons which typically only work from Parent Items and not on stand-alone files.

With the new behavior, instead of being able to do batch operations, I would have to click on each file individually, and then click the create manually button from the pop-up window. That's a huge waste of time.

It would be convenient if parent items were automatically created from adding files via the drag/drop; but at least in the prior versions the parents could be created in one batch.

@adamsmith: The new functionality makes a lot of assumptions about how users have their files and data as well as forces a particular piece-meal workflow that is sub-optimal for some users. Since the new version is forcing users to select each file individually to create the parent item; an additional menu option could have been added to "Create Parent Item from Identifier" which would then show the prompt for the user to add the identifier. That could have been an addition that did not take away the functionally that existed up to v5.0.92 to create parent items manually (and in batch). I think having two menu items (1) create parent item manually - which can accommodate batch processing and (2) create parent item from identifier - which creates parent for a single item would not be so complicated and a better solution for all users.

We've restored the dialog-less "Create Parent Items" for multiple items in the latest Zotero beta.

"Create Parent Items" for multiple items has been restored in Zotero 5.0.95, available now.

Thank you for restoring the batch-create functionality!