Search results display?

flavscience
Hello - I hope that you and your loved ones are safe and well. When running a search in Everything and Attachments, is Zotero able to highlight the part(s) of the documents that match that search? PDF and others. Thanks so much!
  • adamsmith
    not currently, no; generally planned, but no ETA
  • flavscience
    Thanks very much, @adamsmith ! In that case, is Mendeley (or other) an alternative you would recommend? Many thanks again
  • adamsmith
    I'm not aware of an alternative to Zotero that has search results in context and doesn't have a significant number of drawbacks (Mendeley definitely does) -- but obviously I'd also unlikely to be here if I didn't think that.
  • flavscience
    Thanks so much again! Will make sure to share for your opinion should I identify any possible alternative that does not seem to have significant drawbacks. Many thanks again. Stay safe and be well
  • joycekwc
    Two options I can think of as an alternative (Mac-only, sorry, but if you are on a Windows there might be similar apps or workarounds):

    1. PDF Search app: https://pdfsearch.app/index.html. You can index a search folder (in this case, your Zotero storage folder, but you can set up multiple folders) in this app, then use the app to search the PDFs in that folder. It has quite advanced functionality, including ranking by relevance and allowing for complex filtering, but depending on the size of your database takes awhile to index the first time around.

    2. If you don't want to invest in an app, a workaround I have previously done on a Mac is to run a search, combine a copy of the PDFs into one document using Automator, and then use Preview to search. This works on small batches of PDFs - I generally use 'Show files' to open all in Finder, then copy the files onto my Desktop into a folder. In Automator (installed on all Macs), you can just set up a 'quick action' that gets all selected files in Finder, then combines them into one PDF.
  • ligq
    I also love this nice feature. Mendeley has feature, but the UI of Mendeley is ugly.
    Hope this feature could be implemented soon.
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